Editorial: Our First Municipal Fight (1906)

Editorial from the December 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

In another column we publish the results of our first municipal fight and exceedingly gratifying they are when the circumstances under which the contests were conducted are taken into fair consideration. This is not our view solely. Men intimately familiar with local conditions have expressed astonishment at our polls. As one of them put it, “In view of the fact that your only election literature was a manifesto which would only appeal to a deep-thinking man such as the average elector is not, and seeing that the speakers on your platforms did their level best to prevent anybody except those who were prepared to swallow your manifesto holus bolus from voting for your men, it is quite astonishing that you succeeded in recording the vote you did. It was at least twice as high as I, at any rate, expected.” That statement, we think, expresses the bare truth. Our only programme was the manifesto which appeared in these columns two months ago.. We endeavoured to see that every member of the working class in the wards contested had a copy of that. We issued no other literature. We neither deluded nor attempted to delude anybody with promises. We buoyed them up with no false hopes. We asked only for votes from those who were prepared to endorse the position set out in our manifesto in its entirety. We did all that was humanly possible to prevent any but the class-conscious recording their votes for us. No other party putting forward candidates in London can say as much or nearly as much. To them, therefore, every X they have garnered is indeed an unknown quantity. But we can say with truth that there is very little of the unknown quantity about our votes, they were votes for principles—class-conscious votes, and we congratulate most heartily our comrades in Battersea and Tooting upon the good results they can show of the propaganda work they have performed in their districts. Better to-day than ever are 50 votes for principle than 500 or 5,000 votes for prejudice or personality.