Blogger's Note:The Socialist Party is contesting three seats in Lambeth, South London, in the 2026 Local Elections. The following article appeared on the Brixton Buzz website, which is "Brixton’s biggest and most comprehensive news, features and listings site."
LAMBETH COUNCIL / NEWS
Meet the Candidates: Socialist Party of Great Britain – abolishing capitalism since 1904
Wed 6th May, 2026 - by Phil Ross
Founded in 1904, the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is one of Britain’s oldest socialist parties, and one of its most uncompromising. Unlike Labour or the Greens, the party does not seek to reform capitalism – it seeks to abolish it, along with the state and money itself.
The SPGB is standing three candidates in Lambeth’s 7 May council elections – Anya Krycek in Brixton North, Jacqueline Shodeke in Clapham Common & Abbeville, and Cesar Sotillo in Stockwell West & Larkhall.
Brixton Buzz put four questions to the candidates, and in keeping with the party’s non-hierarchical principles, they answered collectively:
What does the SPGB offer a resident of your ward right now, today?
We do not offer false promises that Lambeth Council can abolish poverty, solve the housing crisis, or fix underfunded public services under capitalism.
Other parties will tell you that with the right policies, the right leadership, or the right ‘progressive coalition,’ things can be made tolerable. We say: capitalism cannot be reformed into a humane system. It is a system of production for profit, and profit will always come before human need.
What we offer immediately is a vote for socialist consciousness.
Every Socialist Party (GB) vote is a declaration that you recognise the present system has failed and must be replaced. It is a signal to other workers that they are not alone in wanting something fundamentally different.
We do not promise to manage capitalism better than Labour. We promise to use any position gained to expose its limits and advocate for revolutionary change.
That said, if elected, we would vote for any measure that genuinely improves working class conditions – since we are not opposed to reforms as such.
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| [Jacqueline Shodeke] |
The SPGB vision is a moneyless, stateless society of common ownership.
Brixton has a thriving culture of independent businesses, market traders and community enterprises.
In that world, what happens to them?
They become part of the common ownership of the means of production. Not state-owned, there will be no state. Not privately owned, there will be no money, no buying and selling.
But democratically controlled by the community of producers and consumers.
Market traders are workers. Independent business owners are typically small scale exploiters of their own labour, often struggling under the same pressures as wage workers.
In socialism, they would contribute their skills and labour directly to meeting social needs, without the constraint of profitability, rent, or competition.
Brixton Market would not disappear, it would transition to a place of free distribution, where the produce of collective labour is available to all without exchange.
The ‘thriving culture’ that people value is not dependent on capitalism and in fact is stifled by both alienation and homogenisation.
Capital constantly undermines through gentrification, rising rents, and the displacement of working-class residents. Socialism would preserve and extend that culture by removing the economic pressures that destroy it.
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| [Cesar Sortillo] |
Where does the SPGB fit in a broader left coalition?
Nowhere. We do not join coalitions with reformist parties, including the Greens or any ‘progressive’ alliance.
Our position is not sectarianism for its own sake, it is a recognition that these organisations operate on fundamentally different principles.
The Greens, like Labour, seek to administer capitalism more humanely. They believe that with better regulation, greener technology, and more ethical consumption, the system can be made sustainable. We disagree.
Capitalism is inherently destructive, of the environment, of human wellbeing, and of any possibility of a rational society. No amount of green washing changes its basic drive for accumulation.
As for ‘working alongside’ others on specific local issues: we support any group of workers in struggle, regardless of political affiliation, for immediate defensive gains.
But we do not enter electoral pacts, shared platforms, or coalitions that imply common political objectives. Our objective is the abolition of capitalism. Theirs is its reform. These are incompatible.
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| [Anya Krycek] |
What is your assessment of Labour’s record in Lambeth, and what would genuinely left representation look like in its place?
Labour has administered capitalism in Lambeth for decades, and the results are visible: gentrification, displacement, privatisation of housing, underfunded services, and a council that acts as a local manager for central government austerity.
They are not a failed alternative to the Tories. They are a reliable partner in managing the same system. ‘Genuinely left representation’ would not mean a more radical Labour council.
It would mean representatives who use their position to tell the truth: that local government under capitalism has no real power to change the fundamental conditions of working class life.
It would be refusing to implement cuts, refusing to collaborate with property developers, and using every platform to argue for the common ownership of the means of production.
That is what Socialist Party (GB) representation would look like.
Not better management of decline, but a clear voice for revolutionary change, starting with the recognition that the working class must organise politically, democratically, and consciously for socialism.
Anya Krycek, Brixton North Jacqueline Shodeke, Clapham Common & Abbeville Cesar Sotillo, Stockwell West & Larkhall
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