Party News: Our Election Campaign (2015)

From the June 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the first time since 1997 we fielded more than a single token candidate in a general election. In 1997 it was 5; this time it was 10. Although this was not enough to qualify for a Party Election Broadcast (a party needs over 100 for that) it was enough, at least for the BBC, to grant us a couple of five-minute interviews on the BBC2 Daily Politics Show and on the BBC Parliament channel, respectively at:

At this stage the main purpose of us contesting elections is to put the socialist case to more people than usual as well as to build up and consolidate socialist activity in and around the places contested. A total of a half-million leaflets were distributed, mainly free by Royal Mail, in the ten constituencies. In addition, local members and sympathisers held street stalls, took part in hustings (sometimes attended by over 200 people), wrote to and were interviewed by the local press and radio. A new feature was the number of emails from pressure groups, from 38 Degrees in particular. This provided an audience of self-selected participants. 3000 or so email replies must have been sent (the modern equivalent, and not so time consuming, of knocking on doors).

In terms of votes, these confirmed that only about 1 in a thousand are prepared to vote for socialism. Over 300 in a thousand were not prepared to vote for any of the capitalist parties, no doubt largely because they knew from experience that it would make no difference to their daily life.