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Some bad news for you — Russia declares a ceasefire, albeit only temporary for the moment:
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/4/28/russia-declares-unilateral-two-day-ceasefire-in-ukraine
Merton Stand Up To Racism (from a neighbouring borough) show that they have been leafletting door to door in parts of Herne Hill:
Actually, people living in Milton Road will have been aware that there is a by-election as that street had already been leafleted by Labour, the Greens and us. But still a contribution to the political debate sparked by the by-election.
TUSC have finally made an appearance on Saturday in Herne Herne & Loughborough Junction or, rather, just in Loughborough Junction:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1063662945798676&id=100064649413665
The photo there was taken on another day outside the ward in a different part of Lambeth. Other photos on the Facebook page of London SPEW are of a literature stall outside a mosque and a photo op outside an evangelical church, presumably indicating the groups they are targetting for votes.
Their manifesto proposes the following:
“Lambeth council should use its borrowing powers and reserves to stop all cuts and instead fund the services that people in Lambeth desperately need. Then they should demand that the Labour government picks up the tab.”
There is no chance of the Labour government doing that of course. In fact the opposite would happen. The government would send in a Commissioner to run the council and balance the budget, including cuts to services and amenities.
This is what happened the last time this was tried, in 1984 when Trotskyist Ted Knight was the Leader of Lambeth Council. He and 31 other councillors were “surcharged” (made to pick up the tab themselves), kicked off the council and banned for 5 years from being a councillor.
That this is, at least as far as SPEW’s leaders are concerned, just a traditional Trotskyist “transitional demand” is hinted at in the manifesto:
“Lambeth has lost £200 million in funding since 2010. Let’s build a mass campaign of trade unions, community campaigns and local people to win that funding back! If our councillors aren’t willing to lead that campaign, then they should step aside for those who will.”
Trotskyist textbook stuff: Raise an impossible demand; when it fails, lead in a different direction those who were duped into struggling for it. In any event, seek to be leaders.
But, as we have always advised workers, tell leaders to get lost and organise things yourselves.
Successful street stall in Herne Hill earlier today. The candidate was interviewed on video by the Brixtonbuzz, the online local news outlet; conversations with a lone member from Stand Up To Racism handing out their “Don’t Vote for Reform UK” leaflet; the Conservative candidate who was passing by; and someone who thought that all the patients in A&E departments these days don’t talk in English (and who had never heard of Reform UK). We even sold a couple of pamphlets (the two William Morris reprints) even though the pamphlets were mainly there for display and received a donation.
London branch is holding a street stall outside Herne Hill station from 12.30 today for a couple of Hours.
They seem to be saying that it is language as the basis of abstract thinking (ie thinking about something in its absence):
“… the authors of the present study propose that human culture is distinctive for its “open-endedness.” In contrast to all other animals, humans have the ability to learn and execute complex sequences of steps to accomplish an ultimate goal. These steps or subgoals are “modular” in the sense that they can be employed individually to accomplish a number of different tasks. Furthermore, they can be creatively recombined in novel sequences to meet new needs.
This is evident, for example, with respect to language, which can be employed very fluidly to accommodate and adapt to a wide range of factors. Though the authors do not specifically refer to this, the basis of this flexibility lies in the nature of language itself, that is, the mechanism of thought by which actions and phenomena in the external world are abstracted into mental symbols or ideas. This allows ideas to be manipulated and applied in new ways to situations distinct from those from which they were originally derived, in the same way as words can be combined to make new sentences which in turn can be combined into novel paragraphs, and so to express things that did not previously exist.”
Another letter from us in this week’s Weekly Worker. A reply to Andrew Northall about what happens if you have a programme of reforms to be implemented under capitalism:
This person, who also died recently, seems a much more interesting Trotskyoid:
She was a member of the old POUM Party in Spain.
Unfortunately this is behind a paywall But there’s this in Spanish:
https://vientosur.info/maria-teresa-carbonell-1926-2025/
and this in Catalan:
https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Teresa_Carbonell_i_Cornejo
“Theoretician”, “Workers’ Leader”. He was neither, just a common or garden manipulative Trotskyist political operator. And not a very clever one. He oversaw Militant’s brazen attempt in 1997 to steal one of the names we’d been using for over 90 years. But didn’t realise that “Socialist Party of England and Wales” gave, appropriately enough, SPEW as the acronym.
Two of us leafletted a protest demonstration outside Lambeth Town Hall this evening. It was against the Labour-controlled council’s decision to have recourse to no-fault evictions (even though the government has said it is going abolish this). About 30 people there including the Green Party candidate (who spoke to express solidarity) and Green councillor Scott Ainslie. The SWP had a stall. No sign of TUSC/SPEW and their candidate.
Earlier, while distributing leaflets in the ward, we came across the LibDem candidate’s leaflet. It makes one good point:
“Labour ministers cut benefits because they say they can’t be afforded. But then ministers admit they are looking at reducing UK taxes on big US tech companies — because Donald Trump has demanded it.”
No mention of the fact that the Tory-LibDem coalition government in office 2010-2015 also cut benefits — to reduce the burden of taxation on profits in a failed bid to get the profit-driven, capitalist economy expanding again after the Crash of 2008.
As the popular saying has it: Labour, Liberal, Tory, Same Old Boring Story.
Here is an election statement from our reformist, state-capitalist opponent in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction:
https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/person/119341/marco-tesei
He doesn’t mention socialism (which is good) but he does claim to be a member of the Socialist Party (which isn’t).
More, from their South London facebook page, of the intervention of Stand Up To Racism in the Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction by-election. Stalls outside both Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction stations.
https://www.facebook.com/SouthLondonSUTR/?locale=en_GB
The older man in the middle of the photo of them all not carrying a placard is the Green Party councillor Scott Ainslie. Presumably he wants people not just to not vote for ReformUK but to vote for his party.
The TUSC candidate in another council by-election, in north London, was not happy with their intervention there:
“Rather than campaigning for a socialist candidate, Stand up to Racism distributed a leaflet simply calling for people ‘not to vote for Reform’, not offering a political alternative to Labour austerity.”
(https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/137874/16-04-2025/labour-collapse-and-socialist-challenge-in-london-by-election/)He has a point. It is all very well saying in an election don’t vote for a particular candidate but, if you don’t want them to be elected, from your own point of view you should offer an alternative candidate to vote for, for instance the candidate most likely to beat them. Councillor Ainslie understood that.
More leaflets distributed yesterday in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction ward. We met the Conservative Party candidate and his canvassers. No sign of the LibDem, Reform or even TUSC.
In fact we’ve nearly finished but will probably have to leave out the mansions at the top of the hill with long drives and two or three 4x4s parked at the end.
Capitalists have to live somewhere and some seem to in Herne Hill (but not Loughborough Junction):
Here’s one promise that the Labour government will honour. It’s to the capitalist class.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/04/19/chancellor-rachel-reeves-vows-to-avoid-wealth-tax/
