Our General Election campaign
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Apparently the hustings in Folkestone on Monday 17 attended by all 8 candidates was a sell-out;
Discussion on us on this bulletin board arising out of our leaflet in Clapham and Brixton Hill:
https://vote-2012.proboards.com/thread/18311/clapham-brixton-hill
South Wales branch’s display advert is appearing today in the two main regional dailies circulating in Wales — the Cardiff-based Western Mail and the Liverpool-based Daily Post. The branch had been intending to contest a seat in Swansea but in the end decided to do this.
The text reads:
No money, no wages, no politics. What does that sound like?
In the coming General Election, you’re being asked to vote for parties who all have the same basic way of looking at things. They all support the continuation of the present system of money and wages, buying and selling and production for the market and for profit rather than for human need. There are marginal differences between them as to how this system should be run, for example with more or less control or ownership by government rather than by private companies or individuals.
But whichever of them comes to power, the same thing always results – crises of one kind or the other, damage to the environment, wars causing death and
suffering in various parts of the world, and even in the UK many people going without the basics of food and housing. This is in a country – and a world – that could produce abundance for everyone and easily satisfy everyone’s desire for a secure and comfortable life for themselves and their families.
But this is not possible – and never will be possible – in a world where a tiny minority of people possess the vast majority of the wealth and the vast majority of people have to be satisfied – if they are lucky – with just getting by.
Voting for any of the established parties in the forthcoming election will just mean more of the same. But you do have the opportunity to register your opposition to the existing system of society by voting for none of the candidates or parties who are standing but by writing ‘Socialism – a world of free access’ across your ballot paper and doing this in your thousands. When enough of us are prepared to do this and take democratic action to bring that kind of world about, there already exists, with modern communications and technology, the means to give everyone on the planet a comfortable life in a society of voluntary cooperation and planned abundance. This will be a society of free access to all goods and services, without buying and selling, without markets, without leaders and without frontiers – a society where people co-operate freely and produce what is necessary to satisfy everyone’s needs.
To findout more, visit the website of the Socialist Party of Great Britain on http://www.spgb.net or use the QR code https://tinyurl.com/4tdz4sdb This will also allow you to request a free 3-month subscription to our monthly journal, the Socialist Standard.
Promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain at
52 Clapham High St, London, SW4 7UN.Here’s a link to the leaflet of our TUSC opponent in Folkestone and Hythe:
Dear Lizzie,
You say ‘bonkers’. But that’s the reaction the title was supposed to evoke with a view to getting people to read more. Of course if you’re just bent on carping, that’s fine. You’re perfectly entitled to. But it might be useful to leaven it with a bit of imagination.Kent and Sussex branch report:
Our election address was delivered by Royal Mail today [Saturday].
The postal votes started to be returned on 20th June, by which time we had ourselves delivered about 4,000 copies of the secondary leaflet to letter boxes in Central and Harbour, our target wards.
Incidentally, the Folkestone Herald reported this week that Harbour is the second highest ward for a measurement of child poverty in Kent (34%).
This, the main paper in Folkestone, also failed to print our rebuttal to the article last week that labeled us (and Tusc) as “obscure” and a “far-left sect”.
(The wording of the “secondary leaflet” can be found here:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FolkestoneGE2024-LEA2-V1.pdf )But it might be useful to leaven it with a bit of imagination.
Thanks for the advice, Howard, but I’ll ‘leave(n)’ the imagination bit to you guys if you don’t mind. 🙂 You’re indubitably past masters!
Doing comedy quips now Lizzy, don’t give up the day job. What’s the day job again Lizzy? I have a vague recollection that you may have mentioned being an Astrophysicist. Wonder if your dad was a toolmaker?
Lizzie, I just wanted to say that imagination is useful in all areas of life. If it’s true you’re an astrophysicist, you must know that. I just feel a bit sorry for people who lack it. They miss so much.
The BBC have committed simple error. Go here and click The Socialist Party of Great Britain and see where it takes you:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3gg454qw15o.amp
A member has complained but the complaints procedure is so convoluted that an answer is unlikely before the date of the election.
We are contacting them officially as a party demanding an urgent correction.
The link should take you to:
That’s really sloppy of the BBC, which likes to think it defends us from disinformation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/beyondfakenews/ . I’ve put in a complaint too, and hopefully the official contact will get a timely response.
The independent candidate for Clapham and Brixton Hill, Jon Key, called in at our office this morning. He said most people hated the main political parties and hoped that we would debate against the Reform Party in particular. He took our leaflet and the July Socialist Standard, out today so it can circulate a week before election day (since quite a bit is on the election).
A sympathiser took a photo of their postal vote ballot paper with “World Socialism” written across it and posted it on Twitter. It is now marked as “unavailable”. Maybe because a Twitter employee thought that photoing your ballot paper is illegal. In fact taking a photo of your own postal ballot paper is not illegal, at least not in Britain. Postal voters here are perfectly entitled to show how they voted.
“The independent candidate for Clapham and Brixton Hill, Jon Key, called in at our office this morning.”
One for the anoraks.
There was a party speaker and writer called Jon Keys, who was active in the 50s and 60s:
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/search/label/Jon%20Keys
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