Our London Assembly Election Campaign
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Electors in Greater London have begun to receive the booklet for the elections which lists the candidates for mayor and their manifestos but also which parties are presenting a list and who are the candidates in each of the 14 constituencies.
Barnet & Camden figures in page 37 and Lambeth & Southwark on page 39. This means that anyone in these constituencies who checks who is standing will be able to see that we are. This won’t tell them what we stand for but at least that we are an active party that contests elections.
Those here who are not in London can see the booklet here:
https://www.londonelects.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-04/Election%20booklet%20final%202024_1.pdf
Kind of telling that there is not even a token ‘left’ mayoral candidate, and all the rightward ones are CEOs of one sort or another.
It is also a master class in political leaflet design: Khan’s section is colourful with close to zero argument, he’s relying on being a known factor: Hall’s is too wordy and woeful. Michli and Campbell are great from a design POV.
The SDP candidate is strange, a clear cut through message is that she’s against woke: the current SDP pitch is socially conservative, but economically interventionist, she is quiet about the second part.
It’s amazing how many candidates call London a cess pit.
Not sure we could bullet point the way they do, but it’d be interesting to try, I suppose it would be:
Abolish the state
Abolish the need for money
For common ownership and democratic control.600 distributed today mainly in the Herne Hill and East Dulwich parts of Southwark. Could have been more but rain (or, more exactly, thunder, lightning and hail) stopped play.
Talking of play, we weren’t that far from Dulwich Hamlet FC ground at Champion Hill. Its supporters have a reputation for being progressive. Maybe we should leaflet their next home game if there are any volunteers. Anybody know when it is?
“Talking of play, we weren’t that far from Dulwich Hamlet FC ground at Champion Hill. Its supporters have a reputation for being progressive. Maybe we should leaflet their next home game if there are any volunteers. Anybody know when it is?”
Their last home game of the season is April 27th.
DULWICH HAMLET VS CRAY WANDERERS
SATURDAY 27 APRIL 2024
CHAMPION HILL
15:00
ISTHMIAN LEAGUE
Last home game of the season
Turnstiles open 1:30pmWe are running two stalls this Saturday.
One outside Camden Town tube station from 12 to 2pm, and
One outside our premises in Clapham High street from 1pm to 3pm.
If you want to help campaign for socialism come and help at one of these.
800 distributed today in Herne Hill, some in the Lambeth part but most in Southwark.
We passed the Baptist Church in Half Moon Lane where there is supposed to be a hustings next Wednesday. More details to follow.
Street stalls held this afternoon outside Camden Town tube station in north London and outside our premises in Clapham in south London.
In Clapham we met someone who had already voted for us by post. We saw 6 vans from the Territorial Support Unit, the Met’s paramilitary wing, speeding up Clapham High Street lights flashing. We went to investigate and, as far as we could see, it must have been an event organised on Clapham Common by the anti-vaxx group, StandUpX (www.standupx.info). Anyway, they got leafleted too.
They are inveterate conspiracy-mongers must have some interest in the election as their site advertises a rally in Trafalgar Square next Saturday to “Get Khan Out” for bringing in Ulez.
North London comrades report competition outside Camden Tube station from religious revivalists and street performers but still gave out leaflets and had some conversations with interested passers-by.
Somebody, presumably a postal voter, has posted a copy of the Barnet & Camden ballot paper on Facebook.
For those who are curious to know how we appear on the ballot paper, with our party name and emblem, here it is (I hope this works):
http://spgb.blogspot.com/2024/04/barnet-camden-ballot-paper.html
Not enough people, not enough members even, get a chance to see one.
Here are the details about the hustings in Herne Hill (in Southwark) on Wednesday:
It says all the candidates are being invited. Ours hasn’t arrived yet. It must be in the post. But we will be there anyway, but will have to check up what the talk is at the parish pump.
The Baptists must have had a bob or two in those days (it was built about the time we was founded in 1904), no doubt from practising the Protestant Ethic of not using the profits from their small businesses to live a life of luxury but reinvesting as much as possible in the business.
We have discovered why we didn’t get an invite to that hustings. It was sent to SPEW, the spurious “socialist party” that used to be the old Militant Tendency.
It so happens that on Thursday their South West London branch is holding a meeting in Vauxhall on “Reform or Revolution?” The perfect subject to distinguish us from them.
We are standing in Lambeth and Southwark on a straight programme of socialism, a social revolution from class ownership to common ownership of the means by which society lives. In next door Croydon & Sutton they are standing via their front organisation TUSC on a programme of attractive-sounding reforms to capitalism:
For those who want to see the difference between Revolution and Reform here’s the details:
7.30 at the Bonnington Centre, Vauxhall Grove, SW8 1TD.
We actually left some of our leaflets at the centre the other day.
Herne Hill hustings mentioned in Southwark News:
Door-to-door distribution of the leaflet continued today and yesterday: 500 in The Elephant and Castle area, 350 in Clapham Common, 350 in Streatham and 250 in Kentish Town.
There are now only about 1000 left (out of 15,000) to distribute, 500 out for distribution and 500 at Head Office. These latter will be kept to hand out at stalls, hustings, other meetings and tube stations from now till polling day a week on Thursday.
Full house of over a hundred at the hustings in Herne Hill last night. Over 70 leaflets handed out. Also leafletting outside the meeting were the Women’s Rights Network with a leaflet insisting that “women are defined by biological sex NOT by chosen gender identity” presumably aimed at the Green Party whose candidate for Mayor has aggressively taken the other side in this “culture war”. And a group of social housing tenants threatened with eviction by Lambeth’s Labour Council which they say they are going to resist.
No show by the Reform-UK candidate but the reformist position was ably represented by the Labour, Green, LibDem and Tory candidates. Questions about housing, crime, air pollution, buses and other problems of everyday life to which the other candidates offered solutions which amounted to no more than tinkering within the system of class ownership of the means of life and production for sale and profit. In any event, these proposed reforms could not be implemented by the Greater London Assembly which doesn’t have the formal power to even try to do anything; all it does is scrutinise what the Mayor does.
The local press were present. It will be interesting to see if and how they report the presentation of the socialist case that these problems arise from the wages-prices-profits system that is capitalism; and can only be dealt with within the framework of a society based on the common ownership and democratic control the means of living with production directly to meet people’s needs not profit.
Photo from the Herne Hill hustings;
Candidates now making final short speeches.
Thanks to all of them for putting themselves forward, and for attending tonight.
Thank you also to everyone for participating so positively.
A great community event. pic.twitter.com/vYjd7dZwIx
— Herne Hill Forum (@hernehillforum) April 24, 2024
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