The Left, the General Election and the Labour Party
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With regards to Corbyn standing as a left of Labour candidate (or, rather, the Labour Party left him) in his Islington patch, it looks like his Labour opponent, Praful Nargund, is avoiding all the local hustings meetings.
Corbyn has claimed that Nargund had been instructed by the regional Labour party not to attend candidate hustings.
https://www.islingtongazette.co.uk/news/24395060.jeremy-corbyn-islington-north-candidate-interview/
Actually, the other left of Labour candidate standing in Southgate and Wood Green, Geoff Moseley of the Workers Party, doesn’t sound so bad as the Trotskyist.
What Trotskyist would argue;
“If we want Parliament to act in the best interests of all, we’re going to have to do it ourselves, and
the mechanism for peaceful revolution has been staring us in the face for generations: Democracy.
It wasn’t handed to us on a plate; it’s a right our ancestors fought hundreds of years to get. And it’s not God-given either: it has only existed for about three hundred of the last ten thousand years.
The modern version has been with us for less than a century.
So, we don’t have to take up arms. No one will be killed. There will be no executions. All we have to do is line up in an orderly manner, and vote. If you carry on voting the way you have – or not voting at all – the status quo will remain more or less as is: the rich will continue to exploit the poor, rich countries will carry on treating war as an offshore business, politicians will carry on representing their own best interests, and more and more life on this precious planet will suffer.”This is from his own site not the WPB’s. In fact it comes from the time he had his own registered party, Hoi Polloi, which stood in nearby Hornsey in the 2015 general election. He can may be typical of some of those who have come forward to stand for the Workers Party.
http://geoffmoseley.com/Hoi_Polloi/Never_was_so_much_owed_by_so_many.
Just when it might be thought that the electoral statement of some individual WPB candidates could not be more vacuous, there’s this one from their candidate in Kingston and Surbiton:
Here is the reformist programme of the so-called “Communist” Party of Britain (the Morning Star lot):
The CPB got an endorsement (of sorts) from JK Rowling on Twixxer:
She has 14.1 million followers on Twixxer.
I came across this article on Gorgeous George that might be of interest. An opportunist who courts both the Left and the Right by all accounts
Just read Phil Hamilton’s 2004 article on the 100 years of the SPGB (‘100 Years of Solitude’). Since then he’s hopped from one Lefist group to another and now has just left the Labour Party. And where has it all got him? Where have those like him got any of us? Some people never learn.
Where have those like him got any of us? Some people never learn
And where has 120 years of abstract propagandising got the SPGB?
On July 5th we’ll know – as if there was any doubt!
The question isn’t what the SPGB have achieved, the real question is, what has been achieved by all of the so called socialists who told us there’s was the way to the promised land?
The Fabians and the soft leftist have told us for decades that to elicit change we need to be in government and that capitalism will disappear like the Cheshire Cat’s grin. (Looks to me like the Cheshire Cat has only stopped grinning because he’s busy pissing his pants laughing)
The “hard left” have told us that we need to promise reforms to show that capitalism can’t be reformed and this will lead the Working Class to throw off reforms and become revolutionary, that’s worked well, not.
Perhaps more importantly, what would have happened if those who claimed that they agreed with the idea of common ownership and “from each according to their ability to each according to their need”, had actually joined us to campaign for such a thing?
The reformists claim that they have achieved a welfare state and progressive social changes, yet if you look at The Republic of Ireland, it has all of those things yet always been governed by centre Right governments.
It looks suspiciously like all the reforms that have been achieved are reforms that benefit the accumulation of capital.
As to Phil Hammond’s article, he should have asked “what has 100 years of chasing every bandwagon available achieved for him and has like”.
Then we have the Trots deride us for our achievements over 120 years, good job for them Trotskyism has been such a roaring fucking success!
Is it just me or does Aslef’s Mick Whelan look like he’s in a hostage video?
The CPB’s position amounts to: Vote Labour except in the few constituencies where we are contesting which are all safe Labour seats where we won’t get enough votes to let the Tories in.
In a dig presumably at the Galloway Party and SPEW’s TUSC, Robert Griffiths, their General Secretary has written:
“Tory victories at the ballot box, while the left pursues ‘will o’ the wisp’ substitutes for the Labour Party outside the labour movement, offer no way forward” (Morning Star, 1 May 2024).
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/defeat-tories-priority-local-elections
They seem to see the way forward as a different will o’ the wisp — the CP becoming affiliated to the Labour Party.
True story: Jeremy Corbyn used to write the occasional column for the Socialist Organiser newspaper back in the 1980s. (I’m not claiming he was a fellow traveller of the SO. I just think it was mutually convenient for both of them.)
SO was the predecessor organisation of today’s Alliance for Workers Liberty. Fast forward to 2024, and they’re calling for a vote for Corbyn’s Labour opponent in Islngton North:
https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2024-06-19/vote-labour-everywhere
Comedy gold.
An Irish Trotskyist party, People before Profit, is standing in 3 constituencies in Northern Ireland. Here is their election broadcast:
More on the Workers’ Party candidate in Battersea, Dan Smith. According to this interview with a local
online paper, he is not simply a Remainer but a Rejoiner.Asked:
“In the 2016 EU referendum there was a 70 % remain vote here, one of the highest in the country. There is still a lot of strong feeling about Brexit – but how relevant is it as an issue in this election?”
He replied:
“I voted remain and if there is the right opportunity to rejoin, I will push hard for this. I know politicians like to be overly prolix with their words but I prefer my responses to be more concise and to the point.”
At least he wasn’t a Brexiteer — unlike the Leader of his party who campaigned for Brexit and even supported the Brexit party in the 2019 European Parliament elections.
Meet Dan Smith, Workers Party of Britain candidate for Battersea
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