Party News from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard
London branch stood a candidate in the local council by-election in Junction ward of Islington council on 28 November. It is a ward that we had contested three times before. This time, a candidate endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn, the local MP, stood and mounted an intensive campaign of leafletting and door-knocking, resulting in more local interest than normally in such elections. In private he claimed to be a socialist but, fortunately, did not add to the confusion by repeating this on his leaflets. Not that this prevented the Tory candidate claiming that there were ‘four varieties of socialism on offer’. Apart from the Corbynist and the Labourite, we were the only one of the other five candidates who did any leafletting. Five members distributed some 3000 leaflets, covering every accessible letterbox in the ward. The result, on a turnout of just over 21 percent was: Labour 785; Jackson Caines (Corbynist) 550; Green 219; LibDem 156; Conservative 113; Independent 97; Socialist 22.
There is another council by-election pending, in Lambeth, due to a councillor climbing further up the greasy pole by becoming an MP which the branch is intending to contest when he finally gets round to resigning.
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