A Succesful Campaign (1959)

Party News from the November 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The election is over. The squabble between the Labour, Liberal and Tory candidates for your votes has now been settled. The fact that the Tories won is from our standpoint the same as if the Labour or the Liberals were the victorious party. All three of them stand fundamentally for the same thing, the private property system based upon the exploitation of wage labour. Amidst all the furore and heat generated by the representatives of the contending parties, there was only one candidate who stood apart from such arguments as whether purchase tax should be reduced or the old age pensioners get a ten shilling increase.

In Bethnal Green for the first time in its political history a Socialist candidate was standing. The issue before the electorate there was not whether they would get a bit more if he was elected, but the recognition that the system under which we live is unable to satisfy our needs materially as well as mentally, and only by changing it would we be able to live a full and satisfactory life. Socialism was the issue put to the electorate.

899 people responded to our objective. That was the number of votes we polled. Our opponents may chide and jibe us, but we would rather have no votes at all than the millions that are misguidedly given to the representatives of capitalism.

The party members rallied round magnificently for the work the election entailed. Thirty thousand election addresses and the same number of election broadsheets were distributed. Six hundred Socialist Standards were sold during the canvassing drives. The Tory, Liberal, and Labour candidates were challenged to state their case at our meetings but were disinclined to avail themselves of this opportunity. We held five well-attended meetings at different halls and questions were asked about many aspects of the Socialist case. Our comrade Read was invited along with the other three candidates to speak before a selected audience. He showed, much to the delight of the audience and to the discomfiture of the other candidates, not where they differed, but in actual fact how much alike they were in their policies and objects.

Members can congratulate themselves on a job well done, bearing in mind that our task is a gigantic one and the greater the obstacle the sweeter the success.

J. G.