Spoiling for choice (2026)

Party News from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

WHY WOULD ANYONE BOTHER WITH VOTING?

Can’t be bothered with voting?

Fair enough.

So let’s do this instead!

We know, they’re all rubbish. Red, blue, yellow, green, whatever colour that other lot are this week. They all want the same thing: to keep things ticking along for the people who own everything while the rest of us graft for a living.

Not voting will look like you don’t care and these career politicians will use that as a mandate when the election is over.

Get down to the polling station. Take the pencil. And write SOCIALISM right across the ballot paper.

Why bother? Spoilt ballots get counted and published. Sitting on sofas doesn’t. It tells them you’re not apathetic. It tells them you want the whole lot replaced, not just the faces at the top.

What we actually want: No bosses. No buying and selling of people’s lives. The factories, hospitals, land, the lot; owned by all of us, run for all of us. That’s socialism. Not state control. Not more welfare. Not reformism (tweaking the system) and hoping for the best. Actual common ownership.

None of the parties here are offering it. So don’t pick one. But don’t be silent either!

SPOIL IT PROPERLY. WRITE SOCIALISM.

Leaflet distributed during the election of the new Mayor of Greater Manchester in July.

The General Election: Our Manifesto to the Workers. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

FELLOW MEMBERS OF THE WORKING CLASS,

Once again the various political parties are seeking your support in a General Election. The Liberal Government, who are appealing to you to retain them in office, were boasting in January last of their “great victory” at the polls. They pointed to the anti-Lords majority of 120 as a proof of their clear mandate and sufficient backing to abolish the Lords’ veto. Yet within a few months of this “great victory”, they are again asking you to return them for the same purpose.

Hardly had the Liberals been elected when Mr. Asquith admitted that he had not got the “guarantees” without which he promised at Albert Hall  he would not hold office.

The history of the Liberal party shows that the House of Lords has nothing to fear from them. Besides acting as a trysting place for their financial supporters, it does duty as an excuse for their broken promises and procrastination. They have raised the bogey election-cry of “Down with the House of Lords!” ever since the rejection of their 1832 Reform Bill, but though in power a dozen times since then with large majorities, they have not once joined issue with the peers. Instead of “ending or mending”, they have been extending, the Second Chamber. A far greater number of peers were created in the 19th century by the Liberals than by the Tories, and they are well ahead, with a total of 40, in the 20th century. In fact, the necessity of rewarding with peerages the great contributors to the party’s funds is, doubtless, one of the reasons for the Dissolution.

After indulging in the most violent denunciation of the Lords the Liberals arranged to patch up their quarrel by holding a conference, which, after five months existence, has been abandoned “for the present” – to use Mr. Asquith’s phrase. During these months a truce was called and we told not to disturb the little game of coddem evidently being played by the wily “eight”. The Government, if returned again, obviously intend to continue the sham-fight ’til the Coronation, when we may expect another General Election – or another conference.

Although the Liberals admit that the reform in the composition of the House of Lords means strengthening it against the people, the preamble to the Government Veto Bill states that “it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists, a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis”. This Bill gives the Lords power to reject every bill twice. Even one of their own members has admitted the hypocrisy of his party. Writing to the Daily Chronicle (June 20th) the Hon. J. Martin, Liberal M. P. for St. Pancras, said: “The Government have changed front several times on the House of Lords question, and on account of their wobbling since the Election, I have no hesitation in saying that I have no confidence whatever in them.” During the Dissolution debate (18.11.10) he said: “I do not believe the Government are in earnest in their fight against the Lords. With a majority of a hundred members like myself to stand by them, I do not believe there was any need for a dissolution.”

All this goes to show how fraudulent the Liberals are; but even were they sincere on this question of the Upper Chamber it would not concern you, fellow-workers. Mere political changes do not affect your economic condition. The Liberals say that there is not such a reactionary Second Chamber abroad as the British, yet you know that poverty and unemployment abound there as here.

The poverty and insecurity from which you suffer has its roots, not in political forms, but in the class ownership of the means of life. No reform, whether of Tariffs, Franchise, or Poor Law, can touch the cause; consequently the effects persist though social reforms are continually passed.

Even Lloyd George confessed, in his City Temple speech (17.10.10), that “before we succeed in remedying one evil, fresh ones crop up. We are hopelessly in error”. That is a very significant admission. But the very reforms that fail to touch the evils they are supposed to remedy are, the “wicked Lords” notwithstanding, being made the issues by the Liberals at the present election.

Very Old Age Pensions for those on the verge of the grave (adopted because they are cheaper than Poor Law relief); Labour Exchanges (organised to smash strikes and reduce wages); a specious promise to qualify the legal effects of the Osborne judgment (a sop to catch the votes of the trades unions): these are the futilities with which the Liberals mock the care-worn wage-slaves of capitalism.

The Labour Party, as we have continually pointed out, is merely a wing of the Liberal party. It is composed of job-hunters who, like Shackleton, are seeking office in Liberal administrations. Said their chairman in the House of Commons (18.11.10): “It was because the Labour Party believed the solution of the House of Lords question would be a step forward that  they supported the Government”.

Your masters are seeking your suffrages in this election because upon their control of the political machine their supremacy depends. Liberal and Tory alike are out for the maintenance of this system, which means for you a continuation of your slavery. While pretending to be in deadly enmity, they are united as one against you when you try to better your lot. They combine in Masters’ Federations and try to starve you into submission by locking you out when you seek to make your wages cover the increased cost of living – as in Lancashire. They bring the armed forces into your midst to bludgeon you and menace your very lives – as in South Wales. Through their political supremacy your masters control these forces of repression, and if you are to change the conditions under which you work and live, you must fight to get control of the machinery of Government.

In that fight you cannot take sides with any section of the capitalist class, because it is to their interest to maintain this system which means luxury and idleness for them. Neither can you support those parties which, like the Labour Party and the Social-Democratic Party, are parties of compromise and reform. (The latter of these organisations has, in its election manifesto, advised the workers to stultify themselves by voting for the Tories. Their only candidate is a champion of “a strong navy”!) Your interests, being opposed to those of the capitalists, must lead you to ally yourself with a working-class political party waging an uncompromising battle against all the forces ranged in opposition to your class.

Your emancipation can only be achieved by converting the instruments of production from the property of the few (who use them to exploit you) into the common property of society, so that they can be used to produce the requirements of life in abundance for all; in a word, Socialism must be established.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is the only party in this country that consistently works for this end: and as the realisation of Socialism depends upon the conversion of the workers, your place is within its ranks, striving to bring your fellow-workers into line, helping to hasten the day when the fratricidal warfare of capitalism is supplanted by the fraternal co-operation that Socialism alone can ensure.

Pending the time when the workers rally in greater numbers to the Socialist Party, and so enable it to take its proper place in electoral contests as the only working-class political party in this country, it has no candidates in the field. Hence all candidates before you at this election, whether they be openly and avowedly capitalist, or slink at the heels of the Liberals under the title of I.L.P., S.D.P., Labour or Socialist, stand for the maintenance of capitalism, and from the position we have outlined your duty is plain.

ABSTAIN FROM VOTING

on this occasion, and, lest the enemy impersonate you, go to the ballot-box and inscribe “SOCIALISM!” upon your voting paper. Above all, the work that lies before you is to enlist the support of your fellows in the fight for Socialism, for that alone can deliver you from the misery which to-day you endure.

THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

News from Canada (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recently formed Vancouver and Victoria Branches of the Socialist Party of Canada are making progress and have been very active in the Provincial Election. Although they have not yet reached the state when they can put forward candidates, they have held meetings, advertised the Party and their literature admirably and gained a considerable amount of publicity.

We have received cuttings from Victoria newspapers from a member there which tell of their activities. One cutting from the Victoria Daily Times (20/8/60) states: "Wherever there is a CCF meeting you will find a representative of the Socialist Party of Canada.” It goes on to say: "They stand outside offering leaflets telling the public not to ‘confuse’ the CCF with Socialism.” The CCF is comparable to the Labour Party here. Another issue of the same paper (Aug. 25th) had this comment: 

Leaflets urging voters to spoil their ballots on election day were being distributed outside HMC Dockyard today.

Dockyard worker John Rouan said the leaflets were signed by the Socialist Party of Canada.

They stated that, as the Party could not afford to run a candidate, voters should register their opposition to Capitalism by writing across their ballots the words:

‘ Socialism—Production for Use.’

The Victoria members have been trying to obtain an open-air speaking spot in a park there. So far their application to the local council has met with refusal. London members will find something familiar in the following quote from the Victoria Daily Times (31/8/60):

A Socialist Party of Canada request for permission to have its representatives make speeches in Beacon Hill Park on Sunday afternoons during summer months was rejected. Committee members said it was against city council policy to permit a “Hyde Park” speakers corner developing here.

The Daily Colonist (1 /9/60) had a large type (leading across the top of one page: “The Socialist Won’t Get Their Little Hyde Park.’

There are two further quotations on the same subject which members may find interesting:

Why should it be against City Council policy to permit a “ Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner” to develop at Beacon Hill passeth understanding.

A “Speakers Corner” is something that could add to the attraction of what is already a magnet of local and tourist interest. Members of the small Socialist Party of Canada who requested the institution here demonstrated at a recent election meeting how effective they can be in livening up an occasion. (Victoria Daily Times, 3/9/60.)

Isn’t the City parks committee being just a little bit stuffy in its refusal to allow a corner of Beacon Hill Park to be used for soap-box oratory on fine Sundays? Is it because the request came from the Socialist Party of Canada? If so, it is hard to see what great harm they could do. (The Daily Colonist, 3/9/60.)

The Victoria members are certainly digging their toes in. It is heartening to hear of the good work they are doing, far away on the other side of the American continent.

London By-election' Write In' (2025)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Below is the text from leaflets that The Socialist Party will be distributing in three London local by-elections.

On this occasion The Socialist Party will not be putting up candidates but is encouraging voters to cast a ‘write in’ vote.

What matters – profits or people?

All the parties standing in this by-election support capitalism (the profit system) and are squabbling over which of them should run the administrative side of it here at local level. So, there’s no real choice.

They think the profit system can be made to work in the interests of the majority. But it can’t, and they end up having to do the system’s dirty work of saving money on public services so that taxes on profits can be kept down.

Profits first, people second, that’s the way the profit system works. It’s the only way it can work. Which is why Socialists say it must go. Support for any of the parties that want to run the profit system is a vote for more of the same: more insecurity, hardship and cuts, while the rich can afford the best of everything.

What’s the alternative?

If we are going to put an end to this we must act for ourselves, without professional politicians or leaders. We’re going to have to organise ourselves to bring about a society geared to meeting people’s needs – without a price tag – not profits.

But the only basis on which this can be done is common ownership and democratic co-operation. In a word, socialism.

The Socialist Party is not contesting this by-election but you can still say NO to a system based on profit, privilege and competition and YES to one based on equality, co-operation and meeting needs by writing “I vote for socialism” on your ballot paper.

Socialism or Capitalism (1959)

From the October 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The one vital issue is the abolition of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism

Have no illusions about the sham fight between Tory and Labour or the pretensions of the Liberals, at this Election. All stand for the retention of capitalism.

The one vital issue that should concern the workers of Britain is the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. This is not the aim of the Labour Party. State capitalism or nationalisation is not Socialism. The attempts to run capitalism under price controls and profit controls are not Socialism. In the Labour Party election manifesto of 1945 the false claim was made that the “Labour Party is a Socialist Party and proud of it.” Even this lip service to Socialism has now been dropped and replaced by meaningless references to the “welfare State” the building of a “just society,” and "equality of opportunity.”

Capitalism, whether run by a Labour Government, a Tory Government, a Liberal Government or (as in Russia) by a Communist Government cannot solve your problems. Capitalism means endless poverty and insecurity for the working class. In addition, its inescapable international rivalries are the cause of war which no United Nations can prevent. The only way out is to establish Socialism. This requires the conversion of the means of production and distribution from their present function of producing profit to common ownership by the whole of society. Goods and services would then be produced solely to satisfy human needs, and by ridding society of the waste of armaments and of all the financial and other operations inseparable from capitalism human society would for the first time be easily able to provide all the needs and comforts of life.

The achievement of this great purpose waits only on the recognition of its necessity by you, the working-class, and on your understanding of the democratic political action necessary to carry it through.

Do not be deterred by the magnitude of the problem or by the timid argument that world-wide agreement to achieve it is impracticable. The workers of all other countries are harassed by the same capitalist evils that make your lives a burden. They are no less anxious than you to find the way out. They are as able as you are to grasp the great truth that humanity can be saved only by the co-operation of the workers of all countries. Like you they abhor capitalism's wars and long for real peace that only Socialism can provide.

At present the number of Socialists in this and other countries is too small to determine the results of elections. In recent Parliamentary elections the Socialist Party of Great Britain has put up one or two candidates and, as we knew would be the result, they received the votes of only the very small number of Socialists in the constituencies chosen. On this occasion we have one candidate in Bethnal Green but in other constituencies, if you have finally turned your back on the parties that put forward different methods of trying to run capitalism you will be able to register your vote for Socialism by writing. “Socialism" across the ballot paper. This will serve to advertise the number of those who have realised that the use of the vote to support any other candidate no matter how he describes himself, is a vote for capitalism.

Study Socialism. Become Socialists. Resolve thal you will help to make the Socialist Party strong enough to be the decisive factor at future elections.

Capitalism or Socialism? (1959)

From the front page of the October 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the News: Nobody cares about you! (2001)

From the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

So, has anything positive come out of another instalment of British capital’s election farce? Well, 41 percent of those eligible to vote on 7 June turned their backs on it altogether. The representatives of capitalism and the media have done no end of moaning about our “apathy”, but then, of course, they are never going to give workers the credit that we might actually have seen through capitalist political “democracy”. So, maybe we can talk of rejection rather than apathy. But are there any positive challenges or alternatives coming from the working class?

Any readers from the Bristol area will have seen the posters and stickers stating “Nobody Cares” and “Vote Nobody”. Well, on 3 May (the date council elections were originally meant to take place) people in the Easton area of the city did indeed really have the chance to “Vote Nobody”. Thousands of forms were delivered ahead of an “election” held at Easton community centre, where those voting had a choice on the question “who do you want to run Easton?” between Bristol City Council and “Nobody”. 150 local people participated, with the result being Council – 5, “Nobody”– 145. The Nobody campaign then “derecognised” the council and invited people to meet on Thursdays at the community centre, at an assembly where they could discuss local issues. There are now a few “You are now entering free Easton” signs to be seen around the area.

As reported in the Big Issue South West (April 30–May 6 edition): “We’re telling people to ‘Vote Nobody’ for two reasons,” said campaign spokesman ‘Nobby O’body’.

“Firstly, we want to ridicule the idea that democracy is working. Democracy isn’t about ticking a box every four years to choose between a few cloned candidates whose manifestos say almost exactly the same thing. Secondly, on a more serious level, if the council is failing local people, we believe that the community has a right to say that it doesn’t recognise the council’s authority any more”. (The Vote Nobody campaign can be accessed at: http://uk.geocities.com/votenobody)

The “Nobody” team then went on to encourage people pissed off with the political con-game to express themselves by writing “Nobody” across ballot papers in the general election on 7 June. Spoilt ballot papers? Sound familiar?

Yes, in this respect there is more than a little common ground between the Socialist Party and the Nobody team in the elections just gone. We were both saying, if you are opposed to all the political con-merchants and the capitalist interests for which they stand – why vote for any of them? Why not vote for yourself, for a change, rather than just saying “voting changes nothing”? Why not vote “Nobody”? Or, better still, as we support the use of the vote as a potential revolutionary form of political expression, write “world socialism” across your ballot paper?

Both the world socialist campaign and “Nobody” rejected all the parties of capital. And, in the case of the 3 May Easton “referendum”, the Nobody campaign was perhaps tentatively exploring the sort of community/workers’ councils embodying direct working class democracy that would be vital in any future social and political movement for socialism. In our case though we are slightly more specific that this must be accompanied by electoral action to win control of parliament for the revolutionary working class. This in order to neutralise the capitalist state and its forces of repression, express the revolutionary desire of the working class majority and formally dismantle capitalism and its state apparatus. These, of course, are questions and situations for the future. But at least we have seen in Bristol, for any criticisms that could be made, a positive reaction to the evident failure of capitalist politics of all shades to work in the interest of the working class and their communities.

Local Socialist Party comrades delivered our own “anti-capitalist guide to the general election” leaflets to homes in Easton, putting our case for the rejection of capitalism’s election charade and for the rejection of the capitalist system entire – and for self-organisation to build a free society based on the principle of from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs. So let’s put self-emancipation and the abolition of capitalism on the agenda. Let’s vote for ourselves for a change, and act for ourselves for a change – turning “apathy” into positive action.

Ben Malcolm

50 Years Ago: Is it Foolish? (2005)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following appeared in the Stratford Express (3 June 1955):-

“HOW FOOLISH”

“It seems so simple to put a cross against the name of a chosen candidate – so simple that it is almost impossible to go wrong. Yet in these local divisions scores of people wasted their votes by spoiling papers in one of a variety of ways. In one of the West Ham divisions, for instance, there were 40 spoilt papers. Some people had added their name and address; some had scrawled the letters S.P.G.B. (Socialist Party of Great Britain) on the paper, while others had voted for each of the candidates and a few had put the paper in the ballot box completely blank. An indication of their state of mind, perhaps!”

It is, of course, the reference to the S.P.G.B. that concerns us, and it has to be taken in conjunction with the statement that it is “so simple to put a cross against the name of a chosen candidate.” But suppose you don’t choose either candidate. Suppose you are one of the million and a half former Labour voters who could discern so little difference between the parties that it wasn’t worthwhile voting.

Or, again, suppose you are a Socialist and do not want Capitalism at all, not Labour-administered Capitalism or Tory-administered Capitalism? What should you do then? Is it foolish to show on the ballot paper what you do want? It has any rate had the merit that it caught the attention of the Stratford Express.

Of course Socialists would prefer to have their own Socialist candidates to vote for, but the Labour, Tory and Liberal parties, by agreement on the £150 deposit, made it very difficult for a small organisation to enter the field.

(From The Socialist Standard, July 1955)

The "Ballot" Strike. (1913)

From the December 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

To Show what a smart and up-to-date journal the “Daily Herald” is, the issue of 25th November contains an article by Mr. Russell Smart advocating that, instead of running candidates for Parliament “without even a feeble hope of success,’’ the workers go to the ballot and deliberately spoil the voting papers.

Smart Russell has discovered that it is not good enough to merely abstain from voting or using the ballot, but that the ballot can be actually made a useful agency by Socialists for registering their strength in the constituencies.

Has Smart been careless enough to attend a meeting of the S.P.G.B., and to learn that for years we have taught that the ballot can be used for ascertaining the strength of the movement. 

Perhaps! and perhaps not; for we learn further that the ballot paper can be spoiled "either by writing ‘Socialism’ across it, or better still, filling in the space opposite the candidates’ names with the word 'Knave.’”

If Russell thinks that “knavery" is a better retort to "capitalism” than the demand for Socialism, then perhaps he has succeeded in describing the attitude of the "D.H.," Fabian Society, the I.L.P., the S.D.P., and the Syndicalists more accurately than he intended. 

Smart, isn't he?

South West.