SPGB Meetings (1985)

Party News from the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1986)

Party News from the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Party Meetings and Debates (1985)

Party News from the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The listed Islington Branch public meeting, 'Exposing Nationalism', is available as an audio file on the SPGB's website. Clifford Slapper chaired the meeting and Cliff Begley led the discussion. Part of the meeting involved the showing of Nick Broomfield's 1973 documentary 'Proud to be British'.

Party News Briefs (1955)

Party News from the October 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Autumn Delegate Meeting is being held at Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road (near Victoria Station) on Saturday and Sunday, October 8th and 9th, commencing each day at 11 a.m. A Social will be held at Head Office on the Saturday evening from 7.30 p.m. when members will be assured of a happy evening.

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Films at Head Office. As mentioned in the September Standard a programme of documentary films has been arranged and will be shown every Sunday from October 2nd at 52, Clapham High Street, at 7.30 each Sunday. These films will each be followed by a short talk by a Party lecturer and time will be given for questions and discussions.

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Bloomsbury Branch has again arranged to hold Sunday evening meetings this winter at the Forum Club, 32, Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road. The first meeting commences on October 2nd, at 7.30 p.m. Owing to the fact that the Delegate meeting will be held on October 9th, it has been decided to exclude this date from the syllabus. Details of titles of lectures will be given elsewhere in this issue.

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Dundee. Comrades Coster and Wilmot spent two weeks in Dundee during August and held some very good propaganda meetings in the City Square. In all ten meetings were held, despite the fact that our members were advised that meetings would be impossible without the aid of loudspeakers (on Sundays) as other organisations used them. With the support of local comrades, one of whom acted as chairman, very successful meetings were held, with audiences averaging 300 people at the Sunday meetings. The mid-week evening meetings were also successful. There was opposition from the Communist Party, Scots Nationalists and Labour Party supporters. Our speakers presentation of facts soon quelled their opposition. Our speakers gathered that local tradition at these meetings had it that no questions were permitted until a speaker had completed his talk—many speakers used most of the time available by talking, leaving very little time available for questions. However, our Comrades followed the procedure usual at our meetings, and asked for, and obtained questions during the meetings which were lively and interesting. Good literature sales resulted. It is hoped that before long the Group will become another branch of the Party.

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Ealing Branch report that branch meetings have now been resumed after the summer break, and we have a fairly heavy programme of activity before us. The first series of lectures have been arranged, and all members should by now be in possession of full details.

A visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum has been fixed for Sunday, 16th October, under the guidance of Comrade Coster. The usual social will be held in the evening afterwards. All branch members wishing to join the party are asked to notify the organising committee as soon as possible, for there is a limit to the numbers who can be taken on such a visit, and the committee must be given an idea of the numbers attending the social in order to arrange for the catering.

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Swansea Branch. In the last week of August the branch held three outdoor propaganda meetings. On Sunday evening, August 28, Comrade Ambridge addressed a large crowd in the “Forum” near Swansea Guildhall. A religious group attempting to heckle the speaker were ably dealt with and the Labour Party supporters were easily defeated—a lucid definition of “ nationalisation ” and its part in the machinations of Capitalism holding the interest of the crowd. Some Socialist Standards were sold and back numbers were given away. Altogether a successful visit, auguring well for the future of Socialist activities in the Swansea Area.

Phyllis Howard

Letters: Socialists in Parliament (1986)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists in Parliament

Dear Friends.

In March 1986 issue of Socialist Standard you answer a reader's question by stating that the SPGB seeks to have candidates contesting every election both national and local. This puzzles me somewhat, because I can't see what such a candidate will do, once elected, as they would then have been placed in the position of either having to refuse to assist in administering capitalism (if a majority in the Commons had not been achieved) which would seem futile to me. Or they would be obliged to become reformist in their co operation with the elected capitalists, which doesn't fit in with the SPGB line on reformism, which I wholeheartedly support. After all, if it is not possible for one country to be socialist then it must be even more impossible for part of a government. local or national, to be socialist.

G. W. Dixon

Chatham, Kent

Reply

Socialism is by definition democratic and the means to achieve it must be democratic. It requires the conscious political organisation of the vast majority of the working class. We contest elections in order for the socialist majority to democratically, through parliament, gain control of the machinery of government.

Elections can also measure the strength of the socialist movement. So far we have only been able to contest one or two seats in any general election, and a handful of seats in local elections. As the movement grows the number of candidates will increase until we are able to contest elections with the full number of candidates; by which time the socialist victory will not be far away.

When socialist delegates are winning seats in elections (both here and in other countries) it will indicate growing support for socialism, and governments will have to take this into account. It will not be a question of co-operating with the administration of capitalism our delegates will have no mandate for this. It is most unlikely that support for socialism will reach maturity in only a couple of constituencies. However if a few delegates are elected a little in advance of gaining the necessary majority in other areas (the hypothetical case of one delegate has been put to us) they would look at any measure in consultation with the Socialist Party. Before instructing the delegates how to vote the Socialist Party would have to take all of the circumstances into account, and assess the likely advantage to the working class and the socialist movement. The decision would be made on the basis of the complete measure and not on the basis of the general aims of the advocates of some reform.

Our candidates stand on a socialist platform — the common ownership and democratic control of the means for production by the whole people — and only seek support for that object. Voters looking for reformist promises have plenty of other parties to choose from. Remember also that those who vote for socialist delegates are not passive electors expecting some government to solve problems for them, are not simply seeking a change of leaders or a different way of running capitalism. They are class-conscious workers who have concluded that only the abolition of capitalism will do and are indicating their readiness to co-operate in the establishment and running of socialism.

Editors

Unfair to anarchists?

Dear Friend,

I recently attended a public meeting run by the Dundee Group of the SPGB. Leaving the hall after wards 1 was given a recent back copy of the Socialist Standard (March 1986).

I would like to complain very strongly about your misuse of the word Anarchy (page 3. col. 1): 

It (capitalism) must continue as a system of anarchy. poverty, disease and war.

Surely the phrase "system of anarchy" is a contradiction in terms. Also the use of the word anarchy to denote chaos, social breakdown, loss of the usual amenities of life etc., would not be out of place in a Sun editorial.

Anarchist ideas are peaceful and constructive. If the SPGB expects its ideas to be seriously treated, it should not dismiss other political philosophies in such an unthinking manner. 

Anarchy, peace and freedom.

Karryn J. Karryn 

Whitfield, Dundee

Reply

Socialists do not — cannot afford to — dismiss any political philosophies, since they are the obstacles to the achievement of the society of common ownership and democratic control of the world s means of life. Much of our work is devoted to analysing our opponents' ideas and wherever possible, to debating them in public.

The phrase which our correspondent complains of means that capitalism is a social system which cannot be consistent and orderly, in the interests of the majority. We describe capitalism's economy as anarchic because the commodity nature of its wealth makes it dependent on the market, which is neither predictable nor controllable. The dislocation between production and sale is the cause of capitalism's cycle of boom and slump. The other characteristics — poverty, disease, war — are additional, connected, symptoms of the system's basic malaise. The phrase as a whole does not have any bearing on the theories of anarchism.

While it is true that some people who describe themselves as anarchists hold ideas which are peaceful and constructive (some very close to those of socialism) there are others who, for example, advocate the violent disruption of capitalism, apparently under the impression that this is the way to bring about the system's abolition. Socialists deny this; capitalism can be ended only through the democratic decision of a majority of conscious socialists. It is not possible to establish socialism through each person acting according to their own individual concepts. Socialism will be a social system and will come about through an organised, systematic struggle — an approach which has fundamental differences from anarchism.

Editors.