General Election 2017 (2017)

Party News from the June 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

News and information on the coming election Thursday 8th June

Standing in Swansea West

BREXIT: DOES IT MATTER?

Will BREXIT – whether hard or soft – do anything to solve the problems people in this country are suffering from - job insecurity, inequality, poverty, crime, poor healthcare?

The answer has to be ‘no’. And the reason is that these problems don’t come from particular constitutional arrangements. They come from the way society is organised – production for profit and ownership of the vast majority of the wealth by a tiny minority of people: the global system of capitalism.

The other parties

This is the system all other political parties exist to administer. They have different ideas on how that system can best be maintained, but all agree it must be retained.

Many of their supporters have good intentions but are unaware that, in campaigning for these, they are helping to maintain this built-in system of minority privilege. So, however different Corbyn’s policies may seem from May’s, they offer no alternative to the present way of running society.

No matter how well-meaning politicians may be they can’t control that system – it controls them. The best any government can do is try to ride its storms.

So what's the alternative?

We propose an alternative to the society based on ownership of capital and market forces that currently exists in the UK, Europe and worldwide. This alternative is a society of common ownership that we call socialism.

Not ‘socialism’ as you may understand it. Not the type of dictatorship that collapsed in Russia and elsewhere – which were forms of state capitalism in fact. Not any of the schemes for state control advocated by some in the Labour Party.

For us socialism means something completely different and something much better. We are talking about:

•           a world community without states or frontiers based on participatory democracy

•           a society without buying and selling where everyone has access to what they require to satisfy their needs, without the rationing system that is money

•           a society where people use the earth’s abundant resources rationally and sustainably, and contribute their knowledge, skills and experience freely to produce what is needed

To sum up:

•           If you don't like present-day society – with or without Brexit.

•           If you’re fed up with the way so many people are forced to live – hanging on for dear life to a job that gives little satisfaction and doing it just for the money

•           If you are sick of seeing grinding poverty alongside obscene wealth

•           If you are sick of the Earth being abused by corporations who don’t care about the future or the environment

•           If you think the root cause of most problems is the market system and the governments that maintain that system

. . . then you’re thinking like we are.

What can you do?

The new society is one without leaders just as it is one without owners and wage-slaves. It is a wholly democratic society, one which can only be achieved when you – and enough like-minded people - join together to bring it about peacefully and democratically.

If you agree with this, you will want to cast your vote for our candidate. In voting for Brian Johnson, the Socialist Party of Great Britain candidate, you will be voting for the socialism you – and we – stand for.

– Election manifesto of our candidate in Swansea West

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Standing in London too

The Socialist Party is also standing in London, in Battersea and in Islington North. The candidates are Danny Lambert and Bill Martin.

Islington North, where we also stood in 2015, is Jeremy Corbyn's constituency. At that time he was just an ordinary leftwing Labour MP. In the meantime he has become the Leader of the Labour Party. This hasn't changed our attitude towards him or the Labour Party. We have always been opposed to the Labour Party and have never seen it as a vehicle for socialism.

Battersea is the next door constituency to Vauxhall which we normally contest. It is not far from our  Head Office in Clapham High Street which are being used as our election rooms.

Copies of the manifesto in London can be obtained by a sending a stamped addressed envelope to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. Also available are “I'm Voting for World Socialism” stickers.

Offers of help, phone 0207 622 3811 or email spgb@worldsocialism.org