Brixton Hill local by-election
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We have decided to contest this council by-election caused by the elevation of Councillor Reed to Member of Parliament for Croydon North. The ward is within walking distance of Head Office in Clapham High Street. It will take place on Thursday 17 January.
You can follow the campaign on our election blog at: http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk/
Letter published in last Friday's South London Press in reply to Trotskyist Steve Nally's in the previous week's issue : Why we are against capitalism Steve Nally (Letters, South London Press, December
is right. Local services and amenities are being cut and people shouldn't put up with this, but this is the fault of the capitalist profit system as it goes through one of its economic crises. So, it is misleading to blame those who administer this system at local level, as he does, rather than the system itself. In calling on Lambeth council to adopt an alternative budget without cuts, he is encouraging the illusion that things could be different under capitalism if only there were militant leftwingers in charge. But the only way capitalism can get out of a crisis is by cutting living standards.This is why Socialists should be campaigning for the abolition of capitalism, not for a change in the people running it or trying to make it work in a way it just cannot. We, too, will be standing in some wards in the Lambeth council elections in 2014, just as we did in 2010. Adam Buick, The Socialist Party, Clapham High Street *************************************************************** Nominations closed today. There are seven candidates (in alphabetical order): Briggs (Conservative) Child (Green) Jones (UKIP) Lambert (Socialist) Maffei (LibDem) Nally (TUSC) Tiedemann (Labour & Coop)http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk/ A veteran Militant/SPEW member, leader of the Anti-Poll Tax Federation, quoted in Burns book Poll Tax Rebellion after the riot as saying “We are going to hold our own internal inquiry which will go public and if necessary name names”. Not that i would accuse him of being a police grass, of course!! After all he has Peter Taaffe vouching for him !!
There was a rumour that the LibDem candidate might be clown and former MP Lembit Opik, who lives in Lambeth, but that turned out not to be true. Pity in a way as that would have raised the profile of the election
From the Vaux Populi blog"We haven't contested a council by-election for a number of years. (The last was in 1996 in Clapham Town ward of Lambeth when we got 20, or 0.7%, the equivalent of 200 in a parliment election). But that was before the internet took off.This time we've been invited to a hustings on Thursday 10 January organised by an online Brixton newspaper, the Brixton Blog. More details (time, venue) later.Also, the Council have asked for a photo of our candidate to put on their website, as a means of publicising the election (they probably expect a low turn-out), which they will tweet to those who follow them.Who would have thought that a local by-election would provide such opportunities to publicise socialism?"http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk
I hope the SPGB does use a candidate photo. Making the "case not the face" point would lose more voters than it gains.
jondwhite wrote:I hope the SPGB does use a candidate photo.Goodness me! That would mean breaking with tradition…..
jondwhite wrote:Making the "case not the face" point would lose more voters than it gains.That depends on the face….. Seriously though, the use of a photo would contravene an instructed Conference resolution….."That this Conference instructs the EC to ensure that in future no photograph of the candidate appears on the election material." (1989)
Technically, the conference instructs *the party* not to use photos but I imagine it did not expect the local council to be putting up photos of candidates on websites. So can it be applicable?There is no reason why the council would substitute an explanation for the non-appearance a photo, and will more than likely state "photograph unavailable"Why should a photo garner more votes? Our case is that you vote us if you understand and agree with our ideas. Surely, if a person who decides his or her vote on the presence of a photo of our candidate it is a vote we do *not* want. It's not a popularity or beauty contest but a gauge of socialist consciousness and a measure of our own effectiveness as a party.As I said on the Vaux blog, we follow up with an explanation with a press release to local newspapers and the websites covering the election, and hope it is worthy of them reporting it. "The Party That Puts Principles Before Personalities" or whatever. It would have been worth a paragraph in the text of election leaflet but I imagine it is already printed.I withdraw my suggestion on Vaux that we get Danny to wear a V for Vendetta mask, (or put a bag over his head!!) . In retrospect that suggestion would make him a joke candidate but not having a photo of him would not.
gnome wrote:Seriously though, the use of a photo would contravene an instructed Conference resolution….."That this Conference instructs the EC to ensure that in future no photograph of the candidate appears on the election material." (1989)That resolution has always been interpreted as applying to the election material we put out ourselves. It arose from Swansea branch putting the photo of a candidate on their manifesto (that manifesto is now a collector's piece as it's the one and only time it has happened). We have long supplied photos to the local press when they ask. It's a way of giving the fact that we have a candidate more prominence than a mere footnote would. I wouldn't have thought that it makes a difference either way to the number of votes a candidate gets. I agree, though, that it's a bit of an innovation the council doing it. Anyway, what about this? Should it have only been an audio recording!http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/video/big-smoke-interview-danny-lambert
alanjjohnstone wrote:Technically, the conference instructs *the party* not to use photos but I imagine it did not expect the local council to be putting up photos of candidates on websites. So can it be applicable?There is no reason why the council would substitute an explanation for the non-appearance a photo, and will more than likely state "photograph unavailable"Technically, I see no difference between the party using photos on its election material and the local council using the same photos on its website. Where would they get the photos if not from us or our candidate? Having said that I realise that there is a photo of Danny available in the public domain.But this is missing the point surely. We have to explain the reasons for the non-appearance of a photograph. This in itself would single us out from the rest of the pack in much the same way as an organisation without a leader does.
Quote:Our case is that you vote us if you understand and agree with our ideas. Surely, if a person who decides his or her vote on the presence of a photo of our candidate it is a vote we do *not* want. It's not a popularity or beauty contest but a gauge of socialist consciousness and a measure of our own effectiveness as a party.And as you say, Alan, on the Vaux blog:-
Quote:I, for one, think no pic is an opportunity to offer another example of our unique position. A very brief explanation can be offered to the council to print in its stead, and perhaps a press release could be issued on why we declined to submit a candidate's picture.http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/online-publicity.html#commentsAppearance is everything in the sleazy world of personality politics. Why else do politicians (or rather the aides on behalf of the politicians) always go out of their way to ensure they 'look their best' when presented to the media? We should distance ourselves from this shallow concept.
There is a long tradition of the SPGB not using candidate photos in SPGB election material culminating in the conference resolution of 1989. Were there any resolutions from earlier? If not, why not? I hope this is one of the informally practiced relics from the Edwardian era's practices of politicking that is consigned to the archives.To state the obvious, audio is an aural medium, video is a visual medium, and if you compare a Victorian newspaper to a free newspaper today, print is increasingly a visual medium. Why use colour, photos, pictures in the Standard if it might attract those other than interested in the case? Why didn't outdoor speakers wear masks? The anti-aestheticism in the party is strange from a party in the tradition of William Morris and Walter Crane. Should Walter Crane have not designed illustrations for socialism lest it attract supporters who liked his art? Why not use a voice synthesiser to read our material instead of audio recordings of meetings in case any likes the sounds of a human speakers voice. The answer is there has always been concessions to modern communications. A lot of workers learn visually, aurally, through trusted friends and not literarily. Opposition to personality politics is not unique to the SPGB.The object comes first because it is more important than the Declaration of Principles. A materialist approach to communications would benefit the party and its object.
Our candidate, Danny Lambert, will be there…….http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk/
More publicity here :-http://www.politicus.org.uk/news/why-we-stand_560
The Brixtonblog has asked the candidates to submit in answer to the question of “what they would do specifically for Brixton Hill”:Here’s Danny’s response:- Parties promising to do things for others is not my idea of politics, so I’m not making any promises to do anything for anyone. The Socialist Party is standing to give people the chance to show they reject the capitalist system where making profits always comes first. Capitalism is going through one of its economic crises and the only way out for it is to restore profits by cutting the living standard of working people and their dependants. That’s why what our wages can buy has shrunk. It’s why benefits are being slashed. And it’s why Lambeth council has been cutting local services. It’s not just Lambeth. It’s councils everywhere, whichever party is in control. Politicians, local and national, are just running the system in the only way it can be. It’s the system that’s to blame, not those elected to run it. That’s why changing the politicians in charge makes no difference. Instead of trusting in politicians we’ve have got to change the system ourselves, to one where the places where wealth is produced are no longer run as profit-seeking businesses but owned and democratically controlled by the community and used to provide a decent life for all.http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk/
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