Letter to the Islington Tribune
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The below letter has been sent to the local freesheet in Islington:
Dear Friend,
It is impressive that within two days of Jeremy Corbyn announcing he is standing as an independent candidate his campaign volunteers have put a leaflet through my letter box.
Freed from the shackles of putting the Labour Party line, he has been free to put his true self and programme forward.
Yet, in his election address there is no mention of socialism, nor any discussion of the common ownership of the means of creating wealth.
Taxing the rich means you have to let the rich earn the money to be taxed, relying on the capitalist drive to profit. Common ownership instead means democratically directing wealth to match human needs.
At this election, then, Socialist Party members will not be supporting Mr. Corybn’s campaign. As we can’t vote for a socialist candidate in this constituency this time, we will be carrying out a write in vote, with our members writing “World Socialism” across their ballot papers. We urge anyone who supports our case to do likewise.
Meanwhile Starmer tells the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason that he’s a socialist:
Starmer told me today he sees himself as a socialist. For those scared of that label, he said he saw it as putting ‘the country in the service of working people”.
Here at 18.04
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-69063295
I don’t know how long this will be visible if somebody wants to take a screenshot of it for the record.
When talking to capitalists he proclaims Labour as the Party of Business. When it comes to election time and he needs workers’ vote to further his career he says he wants to serve working people.
Even if he really meant this, he won’t and couldn’t as capitalism can never be made to do his.
Still, if he wants to be judged on whether or not he does this, let him be judged by that.
All the papers picked this up too so, for future reference, we now have a record that he said this on 27 May 2024.
For example:
Discussion of it on the Labour Bankruptcy thread.
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.
Some people in Left Trainspotting circles have suggested that though Starmer wasn’t formally a member of Militant, he did sell the paper as a young man in the LPYS in either Leeds or Oxford.
He then went on his Pabloite excursion in his mid to late 20s.
Here’s a link to an issue of the short-lived Socialist Alternatives magazine when Starmer was on its Editorial Board. In this issue he has an article on Wapping and its aftermath, and he interviews Hilary Wainwright and Tony Benn about the direction of the Labour Party.
I’m genuinely surprised that the Tories haven’t made more of his Trot past. Britain’s very own Lionel Jospin. You also know that if the press weren’t so over this Tory government, and now think it’s Labour’s turn as the Capitalist B Team, they would have been all over this like a rash. By July 3rd the Sun would be doing centre spreads on ‘What is Pabloism?’ and ‘Do you know your Fourth Internationals from your Fifth Internationals?’
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”.
Damn, I didn’t spot that book review.
Hilarious how the term “ultra-leftists” is thrown around willy-nilly against all and sundry. It brings to mind that famous Princess Bride meme.
Funny how the reviewer of the book thinks yourself and John Crump were “follow”[ing] on from Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski.
I’m presuming the reviewer, Richard Barbrook, is this guy:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2018/07/richard-barbrook-man-war-gaming-corbyn-governmentAn interview with Jeremy Corbyn, billed as “a socialist MP”:
https://jacobin.com/2024/06/jeremy-corbyn-independent-parliament-election
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