Party News: Socialists to Stand in Euro-elections (2014)

Party News from the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is planning to contest Wales and the South East Region of England in May’s elections to the European Parliament.

The South East Region is the biggest in the country. It covers the counties of Oxford, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, the Isle of White, Surrey, Sussex and Kent and so big urban centres such as Southampton, Reading, Brighton and Oxford.  There are some 6 million electors (more than in many EU Member States) and 10 MEPs (among the current ones the notorious Nigel Farage).

If we contest Wales that will entitle us to a Party Election Broadcast in Wales, the first time in our history that we will have had one.

The election is by proportional representation of party lists. We will be presenting a full list of 10 in the South East and 4 in Wales.

Election day is Thursday 22 May, so most of the campaigning will be from the end of April on. Any offers of help to distribute leaflets, write to the press, phone in to radio stations and the like, please contact election committee, by email at spgb@worldsocialism.org or by post to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN

Party News: Socialists Standing in Euro-elections (2014)

Party News from the April 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is standing in Wales and the South East Region of England in May’s elections to the European Parliament.

The South East Region is the biggest in the country. It covers the counties of Oxford, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, the Isle of White, Surrey, Sussex and Kent and so big urban centres such as Southampton, Reading, Brighton and Oxford.  There are some 6 million electors. We plan to distribute over 700,000 leaflets in 14 selected Westminster constituencies in the area (in addition to the centres just mentioned, in Canterbury, Dover, Maidstone, Slough, Crawley and Milton Keynes).

Contesting Wales entitles us to a Party Election Broadcast in Wales, the first time in our history that we will have had one, and which will be broadcast some time in May.

The election is by proportional representation of party lists. We will be presenting a full list of 10 in the South East and 4 in Wales.

We will also be standing candidates in the local elections in Islington and Lambeth in the London borough elections that are being held at the same time.

Election day is Thursday 22 May, so most of the campaigning will be from the end of April on. Any offers of help to distribute leaflets, write to the press, phone in to radio stations and the like, please contact election committee, by email at spgb@worldsocialism.org or by post to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN

Socialist Euro-election Campaign (2014)

Party News from the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In last month’s festival of xenophobia that the European elections were the Socialist Party mounted its biggest election campaign yet, emphasising by contrast the world nature of any solution by putting ‘World Socialist Movement’ on the ballot paper alongside our name . We contested two regions, South East England and Wales. Contesting Wales entitled us to our first ever Party Election Broadcast. This can be viewed on Youtube here:



The South East Region is the largest in the country with an electorate of over 6 million in 4 million households. Royal Mail delivered election leaflets to 984,000 households in 20 selected constituencies such as Oxford, Brighton, Southampton, Reading, Canterbury, and Dover. A further 16,000 were distributed by members and sympathisers. In Wales Royal Mail delivered our manifesto to 342,000 households in 9 constituencies with a further 8,000 being distributed by us. In all, a total of 1.35 million, the biggest ever campaign to publicise the case for a classless, stateless, moneyless world community without frontiers.

There was some good media coverage, especially from local TV and radio stations in both regions.  One fall-out from our standing was that one of our candidates was interviewed on BBC2’s Daily Politics Show, which would have had a much wider audience than our election broadcast in Wales. It can be seen at



Press coverage was more patchy but a number of local papers did give us a chance to present our case in more than a sound-bite. A couple of examples can be read here:

Canterbury Times

www.carmarthenjournal.co.uk/gets-Euro-vote/story-21065363-detail/story.html

We got 5454 votes in the South East and 1384 in Wales.

The Euro-Elections in Ireland (2014)

From the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In common with all other EU states, European elections took place in Ireland last month. There were also elections to a reformed local government structure.  In spite of the interest which the mass media devoted to both these spectacles, it’s a close call to decide which poll epitomised most the lack of real and meaningful politics under capitalism.

Socialists make the claim that national parliaments are little more than talking-shops; full of theatrics, posturing and verbosity whose main output are inconsequential debates on the issues of the day. All the while, the fundamental business of capitalism goes inexorably on, irrespective of whatever pronouncements and edicts emanate from those self-important halls. This criticism is even truer of the European Parliament and local councils. For the former, the inability of the European capitalist class to agree on a trans-national system of governance for the Union has rendered the Parliament at Brussels more meaningless than its national counterparts. One obvious manifestation of this in Ireland, as with many other EU countries, is the apathy and consequent low voter turnout that the Euro-elections engender. It is only the second division of politicians who contest these elections; the jibe that it is usually those politicians whose national careers are behind them and who are in search of a comfortable retirement home still rings true.

Most voters, even those with a reasonable interest in political life, would be hard-pressed to name even a couple of their MEPs (apart from the few ‘colourful characters’ who inevitably are present) and know much less about any accomplishments of the members. Of course this can sometimes work to the politicians’ advantage; one Irish MEP in fact has had prolonged absence from the Parliament in Brussels/Strasbourg (due to illness) but given the extremely low profile attached to these positions, this has not been noticed by the electorate and so poses no electoral risk whatsoever in his bid for re-election. Nonetheless competition was quite fierce between the rival candidates. This was accentuated this time around because there were fewer seats available as a result of the need to accommodate enlargement of the organisation to Eastern Europe whilst not increasing inordinately the number of parliamentarians. There’s no doubt that the generous remuneration on offer and relatively light demands of the job are attractive to many career politicians.

State of play

What is the state of play between the rival political parties? The ruling coalition of Fine Gael and Labour stood on their record in government for the last three years. They came to power in the 2011 general election replacing the absolutely discredited, previous administration consisting of a Fianna Fail / Green Party coalition. Their main task in that time has been to implement the budget cuts demanded by the troika (EU Commission, ECB and IMF) who came to Ireland’s rescue after the financial crash of 2008. They now have a predicament because of Ireland’s recent exit from the bailout programme. Prior to that all cuts to social welfare, health, education etc could be blamed on the bungling of the previous government and the strict conditions attached to Ireland’s financial aid programme. Now it is more difficult to justify the continuing cuts and the extra taxes on home-owners and new charges on previously free commodities such as water.

That long-time ‘natural party of government’, Fianna Fail is hamstrung as it is still identified by its gross incompetence in the handling of the economy during the last doomed years of the Celtic Tiger and as they made the initial agreement to the stringent bail-out terms in 2010, they cannot logically oppose its consequences of austerity on the working class.

Sinn Fein was the major winner in terms of tapping into the public disenchantment with the establishment parties; in fact something similar to the ground being staked out by UKIP in Britain although Sinn Fein occupy a different position on the conventional political spectrum. It’s all part of their progress from solely being the political wing of and apologists for the IRA to being a ‘radical’, left-of-centre movement. However even that radicalism is now being dropped as too intimidating to the voting public on the basis that it could hinder the party’s electoral advance. Sinn Fein is now positioning itself as a much more ‘respectable’ party which inevitably means their erstwhile ‘socialistic’ policies are now being discarded and being replaced by a more mainstream platform although some leftist rhetoric is maintained for effect.

The impact on the election outcome of the recent arrest of Gerry Adams was difficult to gauge. On one level it cemented his appeal to hard-line republicans and the fact that he recently spent four days in a British police station being questioned about ‘republican activities’ during the ‘armed struggle’  did him no harm. As against that there is the crime he is associated with and its resonance with the wider public particularly down South. Jean McConville was a woman, a widow, a mother of ten children. Even in 1972, PIRA recognized the damage the claiming of her execution would do to their image and hence her fate of being secretly buried rather than the usual end of those the IRA termed ‘informers’; beaten, shot dead and their bodies dumped along the border. The fact that former close ‘comrades’ have implicated him directly in her murder made the Party nervous.

There was also a clutch of minor groups and independent candidates going forward. The minor groups tend to occupy the left end of the spectrum and broadly indulge in Euro-sceptic rhetoric and promoting ‘grassroots resistance’ while the independents can be impossible to meaningfully classify though are usually inchoate populists and as likely to be right wing as left wing.

Proliferation of posters

Apart from media coverage, the other unmistakable manifestation of the on-going election campaign was the proliferation of posters on any available lampposts and poles. These were remarkable for their uniformity and bore the imprint of some prior consultation with an advertising agency. More than half of the poster space was taken up by a picture of the candidate, photo-shopped onto a bland background. A shirt and tie is the standard attire for the men, jewellery and make-up for the women. About a third of the poster had the candidate’s name in large letters with the word ‘Vote’ prominently displayed beside it. Interestingly the name of the party that the candidate is representing was quite small: with the demise of major ideological differences between the parties and the weakening of the party system, increasingly elections are morphing into straightforward personality contests.

Generally the posters for the mainstream politicians carried no slogan. Even when one was present it was only distinguished by its vacuous nature; ’Power to the People’, ‘Strengthening Your Community’, ‘Working For You’ etc. etc. As to Sinn Fein, twenty or more years ago their candidates’ pictures on their posters had the appearance of men still in or recently released from prison (which indeed quite a number were). Now they are more likely to be young, presentable and female designed to obscure any association with balaclavas, car-bombs and Armalites.

The impact of money on the election process was easy to discern from the appearance of the posters. Those of the independent candidates and fringe parties were smaller, more likely to be mono-chrome rather than glossy colour and much less ‘professional’ in appearance. One redeeming feature of them is that at least these posters had some quasi-political slogan on them indicating an attempt to promulgate a message rather than relying on personality. In fact the overall nature of the posters can be seen as a succinct metaphor for the state of politics now. Any real engagement by the electorate with the process is being diminished with time which means the parties themselves realise it is pointless devoting time and space to programmes or manifestos. Image and spin is much more important to success which entails the indiscriminate harvesting of votes and is unconcerned with any understanding or agreement with policies.

No difference

It’s a pity that the opportunity that elections present, in terms of a slightly higher interest by the general public in politics, is completely wasted. The fact that people don’t engage is probably because they realise, either consciously or subconsciously, that the result of these elections makes no difference to their lives. If you have a house and job, you’ll probably continue to have both after this election. If you’re unemployed, you may or may not have a better chance of picking up a job. If you’re a billionaire, you’ll almost certainly remain very wealthy whoever wins on election day. There is an unstated realism at play; at some level the electorate know full well the pointlessness of this charade in terms of real impact on their lives.

When we contest elections we don’t engage in this type of smooth and glib electioneering. We do not involve ourselves in the hiring of image consultants and spin-doctors, the cynical analysis of focus group responses to discern where lies the greatest electoral advantage or the cultivation of the media to project some image. We openly state that our aim is the replacement of the current basis of society (capitalism and production for profit by an alternative society (socialism and production to meet people’s needs) and we work towards this aim.

Kevin Cronin

Socialist Party of Great Britain Election Manifestos (2014)

From the May 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is contesting two regions, South East and Wales, in the elections to the European Parliament on 22 May and also wards in two London boroughs. We reproduce below our various election addresses, beginning with the one for the Wales region.

Wales Region

It’s election time again

The Socialist Party/World Socialist Movement is standing in the elections to the European Parliament on 22 May and we are presenting a full list of 4 candidates for Wales.

Our case, we are sure, you will find completely and refreshingly different from what all the other parties are offering. It should also cause you to see the world and its problems in a radically different way from anything you have come across before.

What we propose

What do we in the Socialist Party propose can be done? We propose the establishment by peaceful, democratic means (i.e. voting) of a truly direct participatory democratic society in which the majority determine how human needs are met.

This means a society without rich and poor, without owners and workers, without governments and governed, without leaders and led. Where buying and selling and money are no longer necessary.

In such a society people will cooperate to use all the world's abundant natural resources in their own interests. Production will be freed from the artificial dictate of profit and everyone will have free access to the benefits of civilisation.

It will mean an end to borders and frontiers, an end to organised violence and coercion, to waste, want and war. It really will be a civilised society where technology will be used to satisfy human needs and not profits.

A radically different way

Every few years groups of politicians compete for your vote to win themselves and their parties positions in the European or national parliament.

Yet you must have noticed that -once the dust has settled -there is no significant change to the way things are for the majority of people -except sometimes for the worse. Promises are made and broken, targets are set and not reached, statistics are selected and spun.

Any promises kept only represent minor changes to the way things are and none even touch the fundamental inequity of a society (not just in Wales or the UK but in all countries) in which the vast majority of the population have to sell their energies, mental and physical, to a tiny handful of privileged beings who effectively own the planet.

How much does it say about the subservience of most of us that we vote for politicians who support a system which keeps us exploited and struggling to survive?

Employment, one of the least democratic situations

It's said we live in a democracy, but the only real decision we are called on to make democratically is which political party will impose this system upon us for the next 5 years. Everything else is shop window dressing and the activity which dominates our lives, employment (if we can get it), is, as no one can fail to notice, one of the least democratic environments that can be imagined.

It's also said we live in a meritocratic society. But if that means anything, it means that the more dog-eat-dog, the more selfish we can be, the more we can maybe gain at the expense of others.

Despite politicians' rhetoric about us 'all being in it together', at bottom everyone knows that the reality that really applies is much closer to 'greed is good '.

Nor is that actually surprising given that the society we live in, often referred to as capitalism, is based on institutionalised selfishness, i.e. the making of profit. It breeds inequality, enmity, rivalries and, sometimes, the mass violence called war.

It’s absolutely possible

You may think socialism sounds great, but that it's a bit of a utopia. But we would say that it is absolutely possible once the idea takes hold and that the real Utopia is the belief that by supporting the conventional politicians with their old tired ideas and promises the world can be a truly better place.

One way to begin is to use your vote in these elections not to support candidates who you can be sure will give you the same old system but to show that you want to overturn it and end the problems it causes once and for all.

When enough of us join together, we can transform elections from a means of keeping a society of inequality, wealth monopoly and very limited democracy to a means of doing away with it in favour of a society of real democracy and social and economic equality.

If you agree with the idea of a society of free access and common and democratic ownership where no one is left behind and things are produced because they are needed not to make a profit, we would call on you to join with us by voting for the Socialist Party/World Socialist Movement list in Wales. In this way we can begin to make a difference.

South East Region

Make this world ours

In socialism the planet will be like the one you know, but also very different. There is no money. There is no war. There are no rich people. There are no poor people. There are no leaders. All decisions are shared. All responsibilities are shared. Instead of competing to survive, people cooperate to live.

This is Earth, under new management. Ours.

You now have no bills to pay, no rent, no mortgage, no debts. Everything is free, nothing is for sale, and neither are you. But you want to help, just like others do. There are a hundred things you could do, a thousand more you could train to do.

You might have chosen to drive a bus or a train, fix plumbing, coordinate a data network, plough a field, teach a child, organise an event, study engineering, cure a disease, brew beer, rehearse a play. You might choose to work four hours a week, or fourteen or forty. What you do makes everyone better off. That’s your recompense, and it’s better than money. It’s job satisfaction. It’s fulfilment. It’s a life on your own terms, a life worth living. It’s why you make the commitment to work.

This is Earth, as it could be in the near future. It won’t be created by the politicians of capitalism. It will created by us, all of us who now produce everything, working together. We can say ‘We want this’. Then we organise to make it happen.

Against our combined communications the billionaires can do nothing. Together we can force referendums, elections, votes and take control of nation states. Then abolish property laws and the agencies that enforce them and take control of factories, land, services. It can be democratic, peaceful, and effective. We take control. We take our lives back.

This new Earth is not Utopia. There are problems, issues, arguments, accidents, mistakes, false starts or blind alleys. But cooperative management solves the problems as today’s arrogant leaderships never did.

If you agree with this you can let others know that this is what you want by voting for the Socialist Party/World Socialist Movement list.

London boroughs

We need to change things

If you work hard, play by the rules, you’ll get on. So they say. We do all the hard work. Tidy the offices, fix the cars, file the paperwork, make the dinner, change the bed pans, teach the children. We work for the best hours of our days, the best years of our lives.

But we don’t get on.

If we’re not in work, we spend our time looking for work, training for work, applying for work. But we don’t find it.

Across Europe millions who have played by the rules to produce more and more wealth find themselves getting a smaller and smaller share of it.

Over the last four years our pay has fallen in real terms: we are being paid less for our work than we were. Yet that work needs to be done. At the same time, the people who don’t need to work, who get their money just because they are “the 1 percent“, are gaining more than ever.

We, the people who do the work, who make the whole of our society go round, are punished rather than rewarded. We find it increasingly hard to make the rent or mortgage and other household bills. We find our slight protections being taken away from us with attacks on benefits. They shackle our unions. We find ourselves last in every queue to the wealthy who waltz in to the front and get the best.

We work hard. We play by the rules.

But we don’t get on.

We need to show solidarity, and fight for a change that will enable us to get on. As long as we don’t own what we produce we will continue to be second class citizens. We need to organise to take control of the productive wealth of the world so we can use our own work to better our lives, instead of making the rich richer.

We can use these elections to show that we won’t take this lying down. That we can organise for common ownership of the world.

We can vote for the Socialist Party candidates, as a way of letting our fellow workers know: things need to change.

Lambeth: Clapham Town: Oliver Bond. Ferndale: Danny Lambert. Larkhall: Adam Buick

Islington: Junction: Bill Martin.

Elections to the European Parliament are being held the same day. As there are no socialist candidates standing in the London Region you can show you reject the profit system and want a world of common ownership and democratic control by writing “WORLD SOCIALISM” across your ballot paper.

And then get in touch to help bring an end to the system that can never be made to work in our interest.  For an information pack and free magazine, write to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.