Party News (1994)

Party News from the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Sunday 12 June a social was held in London at the Mucky Duck pub. Fetter Lane, in the City to mark the 90th anniversary of the Socialist Party.

Ninety years previously, also on a Sunday, 137 working men and women, from the London area, many of them active trade-unionists had met at the Printers’ Hall, Bartlett’s Passage, and had founded a new political organisation, the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Most had been members of the Social Democratic Federation, which had pioneered the propagation of Marxian ideas in Britain, but had either been expelled for opposing its reformist practices and its lack of internal democracy or had left in disgust at this.

They adopted an object ("the establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community") and a declaration of principles which remains the basis of the Socialist Party to this day. These committed the party to pursuing the sole aim of socialism and to not advocating reforms to capitalism as well as to organising democratically without leaders to pursue this aim.

The members present at the social visited Bartlett’s Passage (the Printers’ Hall, together with the rest of the area, was flattened in a bombing raid during the last world war), next to the pub. where they heard a short historical account of the founding of the party.

The social had a second purpose, and that was to mark the end of the most ambitious election campaign ever undertaken by the Socialist Party. Four candidates were put up for the European Parliament and over one million leaflets distributed to voters by the Post Office. The elections were won by abstentionists who outnumbered voters by nearly two-to-one. Nevertheless, a total of 5,324 voted for a society based on equality, cooperation and meeting people’s needs and no to a society based on profit, privilege and competition.

The full results in the four scats we contested were:

BIRMINGHAM EAST

Abstentions 365,743, Crawley (Lab) 90,291, Turner (Con) 35,171, Cane (LD) 19,455, Simpson (Green) 6,268, Cook (Soc) 1,969, Brierley (NLP) 1,885.

GLASGOW

Abstentions 303,698, Miller (Lab) 83,953. Chalmers (SNP) 40,795, Sheridan (Militant) 12,113, Wilkinson (Con) 10,888, Money (LD) 7,291, O’Brien (Green) 2,252, Fleming (Soc) 1,125, Wilkinson (NLP) 868, Marsden (ICP) 381.

LONDON CENTRAL

Abstentions 333,516, Newens (Lab)75,711, Elliott (Con) 50,652, Ludford (LD) 20,176, Kortvelyessy (Green) 7,043, Le Fanu (UKInd) 4,157, Slapper (Soc) 1,593, Hamza (NLP) 1,215, Weiss (Rainbow) 547.

LOTHIANS

Abstentions 319.393, Martin (Lab)90,531, Brown (SNP) 53,324, McNally (Con) 33,526, Campbell (LD) 17,883, Harper (Green) 5,149, McGregor (Soc) 637, Siebert (NLP) 500.