Suppression ! (1911)

Party News from the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

News comes to hand as we go to Press that the Islington Borough Council have declared their sympathy with and fellow-feeling for, the bourgeois murderers of thirty thousand Parisian working-men, -women, and -children. They have suppressed the Commune Celebration Meeting which our Islington Branch were arranging for the 20th March, at the Caledonian Road Baths.

The Commemoration Meeting will he held on March 20th at 8 p.m. (doors open at 7.30) at the Myddleton Hall, Almedia Street, Upper Islington.

All Workers should come and listen to what your masters say you shall not hear. Nothing to pay.

Islington Branch Report. (1908)

Party News from the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reorganised in October, 1906, the Islington Branch has made steady progress. Our propaganda meetings have been the means of converting, among others, several members of the I.L.P. to Socialism, who have therefore resigned that body and joined the Socialist Party. The meetings, both at Highbury Corner and Finsbury Park, have well attended. the Socialist Standard sells well here, and we are always sure of a good collection. Several debates have taken place in Finsbury Park, the most notable of which were those with Fred Bramley, late of the Clarion Van, and Mr. Byland, of the Constitutional League. A report of the former appeared in the Party organ, while the latter was given a column in the Islington Gazette. We are now trying to arrange a debate with the Islington Branch of the S.D.F. on the question of “The palliative position of the S.D.F. v. the non palliative position of the S P.G.B.” Finishing up a very successful open air propaganda season, we looked about for a means of carrying on our work indoors, and finally succeeded in obtaining a hall, described by the local press as “the cosy, well lighted, well warmed, cheery-looking Grovedale Hall,” situated in Grovedale Road, Elthorne Road, Upper Holloway, close to Highgate tram terminus. Here we shall continue our work of converting the proletariat of Islington to Socialism. A debate has been arranged with a member of the Islington Borough Council, particulars of which we give from the Islington Post: “The first of a series of meetings to be held under the auspices of the Socialist Party of Great Britain will be the much talked of debate between Councillor Thomas Henry Dey and Mr. A. Anderson, of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which will take place in Grovedale Hall on Thursday, February 6th. The Chair will be taken by Alderman T. Wakelin Saint at 8 p.m. Councillor Dey will open for half an hour, and take the affirmative on the question “Would Socialism be detrimental to the interest of the people?” Mr. Anderson will have half an hour to reply. Councillor Dey will have another twenty minutes and his opponent twenty minutes, then a final ten minutes each. Admission will be free to all.” Several debates have taken place from the enemy’s platform on “Christianity v. Socialism,” and on one occasion, in spite of 8 degrees of frost, the audience numbered several hundreds.

Islington, like most other districts, has its poverty problem, and in Pentonville it is most acute. In this district a Children’s Care Committee has been formed “for the relief of children suffering from want of food.” Four schools alone: White Lion St., Risinghill St., Ann St., and Winchester St., have 4,836 children on their roll. The statement of an official in the Pentonville Branch of the Salvation Army that “In spite of all our efforts poverty in Pentonville is increasing,” proves once more that chartity cannot cope with the problem. Neither can any other palliative of capitalism. If you desire to know the only solution come to Grovedale Hall on Thursday evenings.

H. A. Young

Party News (2025)

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.

Small change (2024)

From the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Islington North used to be the sort of quiet Labour safe seat where the staff could weigh the Labour vote and all go home. The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Corbyn has turned it into a place where national politics is played out.

With his campaign as an independent candidate (noticeably, he has not used his ‘Peace and Justice Foundation’ to create a new party, nor joined in with any other left party), Corbyn was early out of the blocks with leaflets delivered by volunteers: ‘Corbyn, an Independent Voice for All of Us’.

This was his chance to put out an uncompromising personal manifesto, freed from the shackles of Labour Party compromise. But the only time socialism is mentioned in the whole leaflet is an endorsement from a member of the Jewish Socialist Group, though only in that group’s name. Given how central Corbyn’s support for Palestine is in his personal politics (to the extent that it was the core of the antisemitism smear used against him) this is the only reference to the Gaza conflict, and it is a reference only to Corbyn’s call for a ceasefire.

The list of policies (broad strokes as befits a leaflet) are for a more equal society, housing for all, a greener Islington, fully public NHS and peace and human rights. No mention of common ownership of the means of production.

Of course, a well-established candidate has the right to stand on their record; and Corbyn does, listing the campaigns he has been involved in over the years, like standing up for the local hospital, saving the number 4 bus, and turning a disused space into a park. All laudable local things.

It is a failure of an opportunity to make a case for socialism if that was his priority, and what we are left with is a clear case that what Jeremy Corbyn has always stood for is campaigning for small changes. Win or lose, this leaflet is his political testament.

Pik Smeet

Municipal Election Notes. (1906)

From the December 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The S.P.G.B. ran 12 candidates, 9 in Battersea and 3 in Wandsworth.

o o o

The Battersea results were, Latchmere Ward : Craske 117, Moody 117, Money 113 ; Winstanley Ward: Blewitt 57, Roe 49, Witcher 45 ; Church Ward: Greenham 93, Fawcett 88, Hunt 77.

o o o

The Wandsworth poll (Tooting Ward) was, Barker 94, MacManus 77, Dumenil 59. Of these 50 were plumpers, voting solidly for our candidates alone.

o o o

All the candidates fought on the Election Manifesto of the Party published in our October issue, a few of which were distributed in each ward. They had no program of ear-tickling, side-tracking, vote-catching “palliatives” and did no canvassing. The candidates were practically unknown and had not climbed into popularity on the backs of the working class, by posing as “leaders” of unemployed deputations, “right to live” councils, and similar confusionist conglomerations.

o o o

The defeat of the “Progressive” and Labour candidates in London was undoubtedly due to the fact that the promises they had so profusely made had not been carried out. The unemployed problem is still with us, slums are being created at a faster rate than they are being destroyed, the shopkeeper is being pressed more heavily each day between the trusts and the rising rates, and so the pendulum swung round.

o o o

Keir Hardie is reported to have said he regretted the defeat of the Progressives. Progressives are simply Liberals, and Mr. Hardie regrets their defeat ! Why did the I.L.P. help to secure it by running candidates?

o o o

The “Progressive and Labour” candidates in Battersea ran under the auspices of the Battersea Trades and Labour Council, which consists of various trade union branches, Liberal associations, Radical clubs, etc. Many of the T.U. branches are also affiliated to the L.R.C., and therefore, while working with the Liberals, subscribe with the ostensible object of fighting them.

o o o

In 1903, out of the 36 members elected to the Woolwich Council 28 were Labour candidates. This year only 13 Labour candidates secured seats. The Labour Party thus lose their control of the Council. As 72 per cent. of the electors voted it is obvious that the men who voted for the Labour Party at the last election and sent Will Crooks to the House of Commons have now voted for the Moderates. Why ? Because they have no guiding principle to work upon and Crooks, Hardie & Co. have been too much concerned about getting in to endeavour to implant it. Hardie says that the Labour Party have lost at Woolwich because of the Arsenal dismissals, but if the Labour Party had not given the electors to understand that these dismissals would cease and the unemployed problem would be solved if only the workers voted “labour” there would have been no disappointment and no reversal of the position. But you cannot ensure the continued confidence of the working class unless you play the game straight. There is no cure for the evils of capitalism except the abolition of capitalism. Tell the people that at all times and under all conditions, and, although it may take somewhat longer to gain their confidence and support, you will retain it when you have gained it.

o o o

Mr. George Belt, recently the paid organiser of the S.D.F. in Scotland, contested the Starch Green Ward of Hammersmith. He did not run as a Socialist, but under the auspices of the L.R.C. “Labour” was writ large all over his election address. He suppressed his membership of the S.D.F. and described himself as of the “Federated Builders’ Labourers.” But then, of course, it is one thing to be paid by the S.D.F., and another to be seeking the moral and financial support of trade unionists. This is a glaring instance of what the Pearson Paralyser called “The Fraud of Socialism,” but, as a matter of fact, it was only the Fraud of George Belt.

o o o

Our old friend, Free Maintenance, received a very severe twisting at the hands of S.D.F. candidates. Belt made no reference to it. Fulham S.D.F. candidates declared for State Maintenance, as did also those of Battersea, Islington, and parts of West Ham. Rogers and Wilkinson at Southend whittled it down to “The provision of at least one good meal daily to all scholars.” The Southwark men favoured free meals to all destitute children attending the public schools, whilst in Camberwell State Maintenance was boldly advocated. In Lewisham, however, it got back to “Free Meals for Necessitous Children.” It is quite evident that these people have not made up their minds about their beloved palliatives.

o o o

At Northampton the S.D.F. ran 6 candidates, but only one (J. Gribble) was successful. W. Pitts lost his seat. Gribble is their only representative now. Their total poll was 2,912. Last year it was 3,221 in the same wards,

o o o

After the poll A. G. Slinn said that the more revolutionary the candidate, the more disagreeable he was to the capitalists, the more likely was success. No man was more hated by the opposition than Gribble, yet he had been elected by a majority that struck terror into the hearts of the capitalists,

o o o

This was a little unkind to the other candidates.

o o o

Matters were somewhat complicated in Islington. The S.D.F. branches decided to run their candidates ”on their own,” apart from any other bodies. Two of their members, however, C. Cook and R. E. Jupp, were invited to run under the auspices of the Islington Trades Council, and after consultation with the E.C. of the S.D.F., accepted the invitation. They were expelled by the Islington branches of the S.D.F. and promptly joined another. There will be developments.

o o o

These two candidates were not only endorsed by the E.C. of the S.D.F., but were supported by such tried, trusted and true Revolutionists as W. T. Wilson, M.P., C. W. Bowerman, M.P., W. Steadman, M.P., A. Henderson, M.P., J. E. Gregory, and others. And still they did not win !

o o o

The Stratford S.D.F. ran J. A. Bassett in Park Ward, and J. Andrews in Broadway. Separate and greatly differing election addresses were issued by each. Andrews advocated the provision of free meals as is done in Paris, and Bassett was in favour of Free Meals, and, when necessary, of Free Clothing.

o o o

In South West Ham Ben Cunningham ran as a Socialist, but the S.D.F. refused to support him. J. Jones, A. Hayday, and other S.D.F. men backed a local official (a non-Socialist) of a powerful and wealthy trade union against him. Explanations, votes of censure, alarums and excursions are in the air !

o o o

One of the chief concerns of the I.L.P. candidates in East Ham was the cheaper burial of the dead. Said they, “The making of personal profits out of the dead is certainly anything but ethical. Our dead should be interred as cheaply as possible, and any profits accruing to go to the community.” So cheer up ! we’ll soon be dead ! and if only a sufficient number of us die quickly, why, look how the rates could be reduced !

o o o

Justice points out that its members in Burnley, who ran under the auspices of the L.R.C. all ran as avowed Socialists. It is somewhat amusing when a body, claiming to be Socialist has to draw attention to the fact that certain of its members ran as “avowed Socialists.”

Jack Kent

Letter to the Islington Tribune (2024)

From the SPGB Discussion Forum

The below letter has been sent to the local freesheet in Islington:

Dear Friend,

It is impressive that within two days of Jeremy Corbyn announcing he is standing as an independent candidate his campaign volunteers have put a leaflet through my letter box.

Freed from the shackles of putting the Labour Party line, he has been free to put his true self and programme forward.

Yet, in his election address there is no mention of socialism, nor any discussion of the common ownership of the means of creating wealth.

Taxing the rich means you have to let the rich earn the money to be taxed, relying on the capitalist drive to profit. Common ownership instead means democratically directing wealth to match human needs.

At this election, then, Socialist Party members will not be supporting Mr. Corybn’s campaign. As we can’t vote for a socialist candidate in this constituency this time, we will be carrying out a write in vote, with our members writing “World Socialism” across their ballot papers. We urge anyone who supports our case to do likewise.

Pik Smeet

On the buses (1981)

From the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Confronted with some socialist literature and an SPGB candidate at the last GLC election, one local newspaper responded in amazement that, while everyone else was worrying about problems like urban decay, unemployment, rubbish in the streets, high rates, inflation and the lousy bus service, our only solution was the prospect of a classless, moneyless world community. A candidacy like that, said our local rag, was eccentric to say the least.

As long as there are so few socialists then what we do is bound to seem eccentric to the rest; so let’s give the local newspaper their conventional point. But from our side of the fence the policies promised by the other political parties as solutions to the problems of the day are not just eccentric, they are laughable; and when workers keep their wits about them they agree with us. During the GLC campaign some members of the Labour party toured the constituency of Islington in an ancient, open-topped, double-decker bus, all festooned with balloons. Two women were talking on the pavement as it passed. They looked up and one remarked, “that must be the extra bus they promised in their election leaflet!”

Better than the most comprehensive set of facts and figures, heartfelt graffiti on the bus shelters reflect the situation; “They don’t bury people in Finsbury: they just stand them at bus stops”. All of the other political parties had promised to do something about the bus service in London it’s the one truly inexhaustible political concern. Voters can forget the bomb, but never the number nine bus.

A Dose of Capitalism

In the 1930s congestion, lateness and dropped services were blamed upon the trams, which were considered to be noisy, uncomfortable, expensive to run, inflexible and the cause of traffic jams at junctions. So they were phased out. In the 1950s the blame was put upon the trolley buses, which were considered expensive to run, inflexible and the cause of delays when their pantographs slipped off the overhead wires. So they too were phased out. Since the 1930s too we have seen the end of private enterprise when London and General were bought out by the London Passenger Transport Board in a partial nationalisation scheme; followed later by the London Transport Executive. Since those days when big was considered beautiful, London Country Services have been bought out by the omnivorous National Bus Company (which grew big by snapping up corporation bus systems that could not meet their financial deficits out of the rates) and the National Bus Company itself has become as famous as Beeching for cutting services.

The range of this history takes in what the politicians are offering today. With the rise in the price of oil since 1973 all concede that electric trolley buses would now be cheaper to run than diesel buses; but nobody can afford the outlay on a new overhead system. Others favour high subsidies from the rates, while their opponents insist that local industry is being crippled by the existing rate burden and that private enterprise buses are the only answer. So it’s back to trolleys, the London and General and square one perhaps. Meanwhile the buses suffer from a really bad dose of capitalism.

Runners and Chokers

Why does reality so rarely match the promise? What stops public transport from being a public service? The bus industry provides a set of jobs that display perfect symbolic parodies of the capitalist and worker relationship; so that, even without the administrative and technical problems above, it is unreasonable to expect anything except what you get.

The job routine can turn workers into mechanical beings, jack-in-the-boxes who pop up when the alarm clock triggers them off. Who better to observe this than the bus driver on an early turn?

There was I, driving along without a care in the world, I turned a corner and runners came at me from all directions. They seemed to come up out of the very drains, running, shouting and waving their arms. In two stops we were chock-a-block, I got three bells from my clippie and the old RT groaned along on sagging springs, steering like a pregnant camel. Four stops later they all poured off at the factory area and we were empty. Rape must feel like that.

A London Country driver 

This is not an essay in cynicism. To the bus company accountants there is no difference between hauling coal by road and hauling people, except that on the buses the load gets on and off of its own accord at each stop. The attitude of the bus crews to the passenger-commodities is a measure of the dualism that goes with production for sale. Passengers are both mere bundles of exchange value and living characters who kick when they are treated like cattle. What can a poor conductor do? If he takes the passengers’ side that buses should be a public service based upon need, then he would run the bus as the users desire, collect no fares, make detours from the schedule and get sacked when an inspector found out. If he takes the company side then he has to dawdle and pick up the maximum number of passengers, yet keep to the timetable within an accuracy of one minute, collect all fares on his fully loaded bus by every third stop, while helping mothers with push chairs, children and the disabled on and off the bus. Telling all and sundry the time and how long the next bus will be (time you bought a watch and twenty-seven feet).

Them Versus Us

It used to be worse of course. During the blitz in the last war the employers forced the crews to suspend the rule of five only standing downstairs (in the interests of national production) and for a time the throughput of passengers on London Transport approached that delight of first world war infantry, the French cattle truck, with its plate bearing the legend “cheveaux 8, hommes 40”.

Then, after years of austerity, in 1949 the bus crews flexed their trade union muscles and tried a half-day strike to wipe out a long-standing anomaly and achieve time-and-a-half for Saturday afternoon work and double-time for Sundays. The employers promptly invoked an agreement forced through during the war and threatened legal action against the strikers (this in a nationalised concern and under a Labour government). Fortunately the bus crews faced down the employers and got what they wanted.

But, as if to show that trade union action unlinked to a movement for socialism is futile, in 1971, when the crews were desperate for a pay rise, the employers faced them down over a strike and offered them half of what they wanted, on condition that they worked Saturday and Sunday at flat rate. The crews accepted and things got worse again.

There may exist a more tricky bunch of accountants than those employed by London Transport, but you'll never convince the crews that this is so. It is legendary at all garages that just before a pay claim goes in the fleet of cars that are held for the use of the managers at administrative centres like Chiswick, Crawley and Marylebone are all renewed. So, whatever the true trading position, the accountants can demonstrate to any tribunal that the board cannot possibly afford any wage increase.

These board members cannot be got at by the crews, but there are surrogates—the inspectors or jumpers, who jump the buses and have to get the crews to sign their cards so many times a day. An index of industrial friction at any shed is the number of crews who refuse to sign the inspectors’ cards, or do so only “under protest”.

Jumpers and cash

The bus crews and the jumpers are at war with each other, either openly or concealed, and the result is occasionally an absurd farce that can only be appreciated long after the event.

You’d never believe what we used to get up to. There was a rota with a dead journey from Luton back to Hitchin at 3.15 every Wednesday (dead because nobody ever travelled on it). My conductor at the time wanted to build a garden shed, but couldn’t afford new wood. So 1 rushed the bus out to a builder’s scrap yard in Luton at 3.15. In pissing rain we loaded the lower deck with half a ton of old timber and dashed back to his house at Hitchin. Halfway, I came over Offley Hill and there was a bleeding jumper with his arm out at a stop. If I picked him up we’d have both got the bullet. So I sailed past to his pitiful cries and covered the bleeder with spray. But the bastard saw the wood as we passed and there was hell to pay when we finished the rota that night. We stuck to the story that we didn’t see him in the rainstorm and as he couldn’t prove anything got away with it. But they came down on us all like a ton of bricks over the tiniest fault for months afterwards.

A London Country inspector (ex-driver) 

But most of the aggro between jumpers and crews centres on fiddling of fares. A wise conductor will be tardy over collecting upstairs fares on a bus where the passengers alight at a terminus. As they come down the stairs he'll run off a string of tickets at the lowest fare and pocket the difference between them and the real fares handed to him. Cunning ones will not dump the scroll run off this way in the used ticket box, because equally cunning inspectors search the boxes for them as the first pointer to a fiddler. The cash clerks at the shed, who receive and inspect the take at the end of a rota, here link up with the roving jumpers. Every journey has to be logged by the conductor and the take broken down into the number of tickets of each denomination run off; in this way the cash clerks build up the history of all such journeys. So when the take on a regular rota falls below the average and the number of low value tickets rises above the average, the word gets around and the jumpers start hiding behind cars and lurking in doorways at strategic points to catch the culprit.

It puzzles some people why services with a fare-box facility beside the driver are not supposed to provide change. Most drivers will oblige of course as it provides a fiddle that is impossible to trace. You give the driver fifty pence for a twenty pence fare, he gives you thirty pence change and as you move away he drops two coins in the box. They may be pennies, tuppences or fivepences, depending on how far the driver is pushing it. The only answer the company has to this is to police the buses with a large plain-clothed inspectorate.

The Political Terminus

Work on the buses is not unique, but it provides a caricature of the shifts and subterfuges, the collisions and the wrangles that go on wherever workers handle the revenue that keeps an institution going. Over the years the characteristically cynical attitudes of the bus crews to the passengers has been formed by their experience in the “public service vehicle industry” and any politician who fancies the chances of cutting through the omnibus jungle, uniting the employers, crews and passengers in a real public service is indulging in self-deception.

Even the abolition of fares would have little overall effect. To be sure the bus companies would save on fare machinery, the wages of conductors and cash clerks; while the omnibus jungle would be thinned out as each bus journey ceased to be a transaction between the public and the company. But another jungle of political wrangling would spring up around the problem of who pays for the service. Should the burden be equally loaded on the rate bills of shops, offices, factories and householders; or should the money come from central government? Such questions are the perennial concern of governments, whose battles are fought in the capitalist jungles of council meetings and offices, parliaments and civil services. You get ideological glimpses of these battles at elections and ultimately you may be called upon to do a government’s international battling when the fighting becomes real in war time.

There you are, just one industry, just one problem that all politicians promised to reform at the last GLC election. Yet it proved to be as tangled as the whole capitalist world.

Who are the eccentrics now? The socialists, who want production for use and free access—or the politicians who promise the earth for nothing?

B.K. McNeeney

Labour's Futile Housing Reform (1973)

From the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour’s promise to take over all privately rented accommodation in London is a confession of the failure of its previous policies of rent control and improvement grams to solve the housing problem. And it too will fail.

Rent control had eventually led to housing conditions getting worse. Many landlords neglected to maintain their houses properly since the low rents they received didn’t make it worth their while. Faced with this problem the last Labour government came to accept the Tories’ policy of allowing rents to rise to enable landlords to make bigger profits. True, they did introduce a measure of re-control of rents. But this very same Act set up the now notorious “fair rents” machinery which the Tories had merely to extend to council tenants. It wasn’t long before people were complaining that this was benefiting landlords more than tenants — but then it had to if landlords were to make more profit.

Then in 1969 Labour introduced another Housing Act whose effect has nearly been as disastrous as what labour politicians used to call the “wicked Tory Rent Act” of 1957. This Act extended the so-called fair rents formula to some previously controlled tenancies, but it also provided for local councils to make “improvement grants” to landlords. The intention no doubt was that the sitting tenants would benefit in terms of better housing, even if they did have to pay more rent. But it has not worked like this at all. Property companies have bought houses off smaller landlords, obtained a grant to convert them into flats — and then let them off at much higher rents. Far from the sitting tenants’ benefiting they have had to find alternative accommodation. Whole communities of lower-paid workers, as in parts of Islington, have been driven out of their traditional homes by these “improvement” grants, swelling the number of homeless and aggravating the housing shortage.

The whole business illustrates the futility of piecemeal reform as a solution to the housing problem. It proves the soundness of the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s contention that the housing problem can never be solved as long as capitalism lasts. What is required is a complete change in the basis of society which will bring the means of production into common ownership under the democratic control of all the people. Only on this basis can production be planned with a view to satisfying people’s needs. Housing would then be no problem. The resources, human and material, to build enough decent homes for everybody have long been in existence. In Socialism there will be no class privileges or profit motive to prevent them being used to do this, as there is under capitalism.

Voices in the wilderness (1983)

From the July 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

More than half of the workers we canvassed in last month’s election campaign were cynical about the promises of all the main parties standing. For three weeks every five years, the British ruling class expects us to think about “politics”, that is, about which band of professional liars will administer our poverty for the next period. We attended all of the main parties’ meetings in order to sell socialist literature, as part of our campaign in Islington, and at each meeting we saw the same few faces, sadly devoted to the empty rhetoric of their indistinguishable leaders.

In Islington South and Finsbury, where the only genuinely socialist candidate was standing, the Tories kept quite a low profile. Thatcher’s talk of Victorian Values had been dropped for the duration of the campaign, since for most workers, the only way in which hard work and thrift prove profitable is when our bosses profit from our hard work and thrift. The Tory leaflet spoke of “the quality of our armed forces”, “controlling secondary picketing” and “larger export markets”; all matters only of interest to those who own and control the wealth of Britain, not the millions who produce it.

The two favourites in the race for power in Islington South were the Labour and SDP candidates. The Labour Party relied almost entirely on the “lesser evil" myth. Realising that capitalism under the Labour varnish is quite unsavoury to many of the workers it exploits, they told us that we had to vote Labour, to avoid the greater horror of capitalism tarnished by the leadership of Thatcher. The idea that to get rid of Thatcher’s capitalism the only possibility is to support Foot’s capitalism is as stupidly dogmatic as the Tory claim that there is no alternative to their policies. Tactical voting is based on the assumption that sheep must follow one another on to a limited number of bandwagons, then shuffle around until the least obnoxious compromise can be found. It denies any kind of clear principle or aim, and any possibility of real social change through democratic persuasion.

The election was taken over, especially in Islington, by the most cynical slander and manipulation on all sides. The social system represented by all the major parties has become bankrupt of ideas. They have almost run out of ways to secure workers’ loyalty to the system which exploits us. Consequently, more time was spent attacking their opponents than claiming any positive merits for their own policies. Many people we canvassed said they agreed with the revolutionary alternative we were standing for, but would vote Labour through an almost religious, irrational attachment to traditional loyalties. When they start to act more in accordance with their real disgust at the Labour Party’s cynical running of the profit system, what is regarded as possible and impossible will rapidly change. Perhaps the most ludicrous example of this contradictory attitude came from the misnamed Socialist Workers Party. Some of their members passionately attacked the Labour candidate at a public rally, shouting out that Labour had always inevitably betrayed the workers because it was running the capitalist system. Finally, they were told from the platform, “No, no. You should be campaigning for a Labour victory”. They replied, to the audience’s bewilderment, “We are" and, sure enough, their paper told people to Vote Labour, even though the Socialist Party of Great Britain was posing the revolutionary socialist alternative.

We were faced with three well-oiled machines, prepared to stop at nothing in their desperate vote-catching. The Labour candidate even referred at a public meeting to the SPGB campaign slogan, "Vote for Yourself for a Change”, and claimed that the Labour Party embodied this no-leaders democracy! Their confidential instructions (from above, of course) tell a different story:

DO NOT ASK: "Will you be voting Labour?" That is bad canvassing. Voters say yes to get rid of you/make you happy/ deliberately confuse you . . . If person says "I never vote”, mark on card. We do not wish to antagonise by calling again. Sometimes people tell the truth!

One of the most infamous careerists in the constituency was the sitting MP, George Cunningham. He was elected through the Labour Party in 1979 and then transferred to their Old Boys’ Club, the SDP. In some circles he is known as George Conning’em, since that’s what he’s been doing for the past five years. Most people wouldn’t mind a pound for every baby he’s kissed. When we challenged him to a public debate, he arrogantly replied that we would have to find someone to give us publicity elsewhere, he was too busy proclaiming his commitment to democracy and free speech to mess about with petty things like public debates. Now that he has lost his job at Westminster, we plan to offer him the publicity he once denied us, by repeating our challenge to debate.

One leaflet contained compliments about Cunningham from the Daily Mail, The Times, Observer, Guardian, BBC and Punch. In other words, he is a model capitalist politician, expert at persuading people to leave control in the hands of a minority. Another shows a cartoon of him with a big, tightly-clenched fist, and another with a foot stamping on the neck of an alligator marked Creeping Extremism. The local SDP campaign was based on the "left extremist" scare, traditionally popular with the fascists. SDP Agent Chris Pryce was quoted in the Islington Gazette as saying:

Make no mistake, Chris Smith is one of the most extreme Labour candidates in the country. His constant harping on gay rights, his open support for punks and squatters and other fringe groups is now common knowledge.

Of course, at the time Pryce was not aware that the SDP were soon to join the fringe groups in Islington; on the other hand. Smith is now at Westminster, and there has been no revolution in the conditions of the workers in Islington or anywhere else.

One day, while leafletting in Chapel Market alongside the SDP, one of their members explained to us that they only had short leaflets there, since the people wouldn't understand a more detailed manifesto. It was claimed that Labour posters were displayed in the windows of empty flats by the Labour Council because there was so little genuine support for them on many of the estates. Some Labour canvassers were reported to have resorted to telling people that Cunningham was ill or not standing, and that it was illegal to display his posters. All of this vicious in-fighting among politicians standing for the profit system took the place of real debate over policies. It was not just Cunningham who refused to debate with us; we had also been refused by the Labour candidate Smith, and by both the SDP and Labour candidates in the Islington North constituency.

Islington CND planned and advertised a public debate between the candidates on the question of nuclear weapons, but this had to be abandoned since they refused to comply with the regulations which demand that all candidates be invited to such meetings; they did not want to give a platform to the candidates from the National Front and the British National Party. They even tried to use a legal loophole by asking if we would formally put the costs of running the meeting on our election expenses, which would have allowed them to leave out the fascists. We refused, pointing out the illogicality of opposing somebody because they are against free speech, and then denying them the chance to air their ideas. If the NF and BNP had to explain themselves on a public platform, most workers would be quite capable of rejecting their vicious and divisive racism, without having CND to censor it for them. Moreover, the NF, like CND. is against the American nuclear bases and missiles because they are nationalists. Indeed, the manifesto of the NF, with its support for import controls and getting out of the Common Market, shares with much of the Left the nationalist, anti-working-class policy of British state capitalism.

The real local issues were hardly dealt with at all by the six parties who stood against the SPGB and world socialism. One in five workers in Islington are unemployed. Over ten thousand are on the housing waiting list, despite there being many empty homes. An increasing number of young people there are turning to heroin, despite having friends who have died on it. On certain housing estates, violent racist attacks constantly threaten thousands of people. Since 1975, under Labour and Tory governments, the number of hospitals in Islington has been reduced from five to two. The Labour Party has failed again and again to live up to the expectations of its supporters, because it operates within the confines of the anti-human system which lies at the root of all these problems. When challenged about the possibility of a genuine socialist alternative, the Labour candidate told us, as would any Tory, about the need for “realism”. In other words, keep a system of war, poverty and institutionalised misery, rather than end the sacred rights of property.

The contradictions of the present social system cannot be reformed away by the rhetoric of individual politicians. In health, housing and so on. profit comes before need, accumulation before consumption. In the week of the election, houses in Islington (Barnsbury and Canonbury Square) were advertised costing £130,000, £154,950, £197,500 . . . The people buying these properties do not suffer the housing problems for which the area is notorious. As long as this class division remains, the majority will be in an inferior, insecure position. The Labour Party’s Plan for Jobs was just a policy to retain profits for a minority and wage-slavery for the rest. As the local community paper, the Islington Gutter Press explained:

None of these (Labour) objectives will be possible without the co-operation of the trade unions . . . Yes. the trade unions will have to show restraint and they will have to abide by the National Economic Assessment. But we believe in them and we believe in the future of this country.

As long as capitalism has lasted, not a single day has gone by without discontent and dissent burning on somewhere. But the enormous potential for revolutionary change has, for the past century, been channelled into fruitless reformism. Workers won the vote in the late nineteenth century but instead of using it to end the profit system, they have used it to give capitalism a longer lease, sometimes through Labour governments which have understandings with the unions. The Socialist Party of Great Britain stood in the election on a uniquely different basis, of working-class unity and democratic revolution. The solution to the chaos of the market system is. like the problem it solves, world-wide despite the nonsense spoken about the Socialist Republic of Islington and despite the fact that one of the local candidates was the Islington and Finsbury Party.

85 more nails . . .

In our manifesto, we asked people not to vote for us unless they were fully in agreement with what we stand for. After all, socialism could only be established if a majority were prepared to take the necessary action democratically, and with responsibility. True democracy cannot be enforced or introduced by methods of secret infiltration. The little media coverage we received during the campaign thought this was quite a joke, since to them democratic elections must involve not open persuasion and consistency but slander, vote-catching and opportunism. The electorate of Islington South and Finsbury were happy to oblige with our request not to vote for us if they were still suffering from capitalist conditioning and prejudice: we polled 85 votes, against 13,460 for the Labour Party, 13,097 for the SDP, 9,894 for the Tories, 341 for the National Front, 94 for the British National Party and 102 for the Islington and Finsbury Party. But as many as two in five voters in Islington abstained, sick of the failed promises of these political leaders.

Abstention, however, is in its effect little different from acceptance of the status quo. We are gradually building a separate political force which will be able to use the vote in a revolutionary way. The local Socialist Party branch in Islington has multiplied its membership more than five times over since its formation about five years ago, without admitting to membership anyone who is not a socialist, fully aware of the nature of the change we propose. Unlike the politicians who have been elected to run the system of class division, we will not vanish from the scene or suspend canvassing for five years. The debate between production for the profit of a few and production for the use of all is now more pressing than ever. We will be stepping up our activities of street-selling, canvassing and running meetings in Islington in the months ahead. Each worker declaring a practical commitment to a classless, world society of democratic control and common ownership represents another nail in the coffin of capitalism.

Clifford Slapper

Islington By-Election: Vote for yourself for a change? (2013)

Party News from the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

• Why, when the resources exist to provide a decent standard of living for everyone, are we going through “austerity”?
• It’s because the present system is not geared to meeting our needs but to making profits for businesses and the rich people who own and control them. At the moment this capitalist system is in an economic crisis where profits have fallen The only way out for the system is to restore profits at our expense.
• That’s why what our wages can buy has shrunk. It’s why benefits are being slashed. And it’s why Islington council has been cutting local services.
• It’s not just Islington. It’s councils everywhere, whichever party is in control. Councils get most of their money from the government, but market forces have obliged the government to reduce this. National and local politicians are just running the system in the only way it can be – as a profit system where priority has to be given to profit-making over meeting our needs.
•  It’s the system that’s to blame, not those elected to run it. That’s why changing the politicians in charge makes no difference. As the saying goes, “changing governments changes nothing”. It will be like this as long as the profit system lasts. So there is no point in voting for parties that accept this system.
• The alternative is to change to a new system based on satisfying our needs, where the places where wealth is produced will no longer be owned by profit-seeking businesses but will be owned and democratically controlled by us all. That’s what the Socialist Party stands for. We are contesting this  by-election to raise this issue, and to give those of you who agree a chance to be counted.
• You can do this by voting for the Socialist candidate, BILL MARTIN. And then get in touch to help bring an end to the system that can never be made to work in your interest.

Write to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, SW4 7UN.

Tel: 0207 622 3811 Email: spgb@worldsocialism.org

Election Blog: http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk

Islington By-Election, Junction Ward, 21 March 2013

Greasy Pole: Public Accounts Hodge Podge (2015)

The Greasy Pole column from the May 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

If anyone had any doubts about the purpose and activities of those luminous, towering buildings in what was once London Docklands they can refer to the most assertive of them, announcing itself in enormous letters on high, as HSBC. This is the successor to what was named the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, founded in 1865 to spread out until it achieved its place as the second biggest bank in the world, reminding us of the power of the class who own it and fashion all its operations. But now the bank is under pressure to justify its record in matters such as the failure to pay legal taxes, the rewards to its upper management and a pervading policy of corruption. All of which has attracted the attention of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) where they are assumed to be certain of their sources of information and of their intention to use what they know. Such as was ruthlessly imposed by its recent Chairman Margaret Hodge MP for Barking – who insists that she is not to be known as Chair.

Exasperated
HSBC was among the victims of the PAC, under suspicion of colluding in tax avoidance at their Swiss Branch, leading to the withdrawal of blocks of cash amassed through such activities as dealing in drugs, armaments and all that entailed. Shortly before grilling some of the bank’s top executives Hodge had set the scene by informing another witness who exasperated her with his evasions that ‘. , , honestly, I want to put a bomb under you guys’. So the prospects were not promising for HSBC’s Non-Executive Director Rona Fairhead, who assured the Committee that it did not follow from her salary of £513,000 a year that she would be expected to be aware of the tax offences, even though they were estimated to have reached some £135 million in the UK ‘. . . I can assure you we had no evidence of tax evasion’. But Hodge was unimpressed: ‘I think you knew. Either you colluded in tax evasion or you didn’t know. In that case you are either incredibly naïve or totally incompetent’. And then, in relation to one of Fairhead’s other lucrative responsibilities ‘. . . you should think about resigning and if not, I think the government should sack you’.

Loony
Who is this fearless, feisty champion of truth and probity in public office? Hodge is a multi-millionaire who was brought to England as a child when her family left Egypt to escape the anti-Semitism arising from the 1948 Egypt/Israeli War. Settled in London, they grew massively rich on the proceeds of their family-owned steel processing and trading company which now has a turnover reckoned in billions, and of which she is still a shareholder. After university Hodge worked in Market Research and in 1973 she was elected as a local councillor in the London Borough of Islington. She rose to Chair of the Housing Committee, something of a hot seat in a borough notorious for its housing problems. But she was well-connected; her Vice Chairman was Jack Straw and a neighbour was Tony Blair, whose wife Cherie was employed in the legal firm of Hodge’s husband. At that time the Social Democratic Party was growing, causing large scale desertions among Islington’s Labour Party – an opportunity for Hodge to take over as Leader of the Council. Islington was reputed to be a hot-bed of ‘loony lefties’ where they attempted to conceal attention from the chaos on the ground by flying a red flag from the roof of the Town Hall.

Abuse
Hodge stepped down from the Council in October 1992. The more suspicious observers may have regarded this as an example of shrewd timing because it happened when a massive scandal about sexual abuse of children in Islington council care was about to be exposed. In 1985 Demetrious Panton had written to the council to complain about his treatment when he was in their care during the 1970s and the 1980s. The doubts and anxieties about this were aggravated by the council’s failure to reply to Panton until 1989, and then to inform him that while regretting his experience they did not admit to any fault on their part. But the matter did not die away because at that time Senior Social Worker Liz Davies and her manager were facing a succession of severely damaged youngsters who, apart from other problems such as homelessness and involvement in petty survival crime, were saying that they were regularly abused in private or council homes. ‘It was like a queue’ was how Davies described what she found at her office each morning; ‘There is a lot that I just can’t speak about’. Apparently, Hodge would not hear social workers’ pleas for additional resources: ‘She only cared about the budget’. Then some crucial publicity was threatened in October 1992 from the Evening Standard publishing the first of a series of reports on the abuse at the care homes, which Hodge chose to describe as ‘a sensationalist piece of gutter journalism’.

Apology
It was shortly after this that she left the council and, after a by-election in 1994, entered the House of Commons to support Tony Blair’s campaign for the Labour leadership. Her reward came in 2003 when she was appointed as Minister for Children. This was too much of a shock for even the most ardent of Blairites as it aroused the still festering anger about what had happened, and what had allegedly been suppressed, in Islington. For one thing an independent report by the Director of Oxford Social Services in 1995 had largely found that the original complaints had been valid and described the affairs of Islington council as ‘disastrous’. But Hodge fought back, writing to the chairman of the BBC in an attempt to stop a Radio Four programme about the abuses which she described as ‘deplorable sensationalism’ and to inform him that Panton was ‘an extremely disturbed person’. In all this she was going too far; she offered to apologise to Panton but he refused this as inadequate so that in the end she had to make a public apology in the High Court and to pay him £30,000. So it could be said that at least the Panton episode had reached some kind of conclusion 25 years after it had begun. And in June 2010 Hodge was made Chair of the PAC, in which job she has impressed a clutch of Members too easily blinded by her energetic concealment of cruel facts under her fog of self-promotion.

Ivan

Political Notes: Some Win, Some Lose (1982)

The Political Notes column from the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some win, some lose

It may have escaped attention—because in the shocked aftermath no one was admitting to defeat—but it was the Social Democratic candidate who won the Hillhead by-election.

The Tories congratulated themselves on losing so few votes and on coming second after nearly three years of rescuing us all with their unpopular policies. The Labour Party, in a process which would have done credit to the most hardened wrangler, found solace in their discovery that more Hillhead voters had deserted the Tories for the SDP than they had Labour.

Naturally, the spokespeople for these parties could not be expected to face the fact that the voters rejected them because they had failed so wretchedly to live up to their promises. They came to power trailing glorious visions of prosperity, justice, freedom . . . They lose power miserably in their impotence and squabbling among themselves about who among them bears the major responsibility for their defeat.

The working class, who at elections vote to continue the experience that life under capitalism is a daily struggle, understand so little of their class position and interests that they turn from one discredited futility to the other—then back again.

Many of them are now deceived into thinking that the SDP/Liberal Alliance offers something radically different from the outworn nostrums of the Labour and Tory parties. What the SDP offers is no more than a rehash of the programmes and the personalities of those other parties. There is no reason to believe that they will succeed where the others have failed; their character is basically the same—a prescription for failure, despair and defeat.

Hillhead was no cause for rejoicing. Capitalism grinds on. Whoever won, for working class interests it was another defeat.


Good news for some

Good news for the government: the number of people claiming Supplementary Benefit has reached a record 4 million, with the Guardian (23/3/82) estimating that the number on the poverty line (which would more accurately be named the destitution line) is around 6 million.

Supplementary Benefit was originally considered, in those long gone days when Beveridge was readjusting working class poverty and calling it prosperity, as an emergency fall back for a few, particularly unfortunate workers. In theory, the other benefits which could be claimed “as of right” were in almost every case enough to eliminate need.

The change in this—and in the rise in the numbers on Supplementary Benefit—is due to developments like the growth in long term unemployed and the ending of earnings related benefits, which served to keep many claimants above the theoretical supplementary level.

Thus do some “reforms”, plus the inexorable anarchy of capitalism, undermine others and expose their general impotence. Tory MP Peter Bottomley has wailed ". . . the Supplementary Benefits system is falling apart. . . ”.

But perhaps some ministers will welcome this as good news because one of their theories, often expounded by the likes of Norman Tebbit and Keith Joseph, is that British capitalism will best thrive if workers’ incomes are kept as low as possible; then they will be pricing themselves into jobs. And incomes could not be much lower than Supplementary Benefit.

Even on their own assumptions, the “low wages equals competitive, profitable industry” argument is not valid. Of course the problem for the government is that those 4 million claimants are not getting wages; they’re not employed, not turning out commodities to be sold and to realise profit. It is a symbol of government’s impotence, that try as they might, they can do nothing about that either.

If there were signs that the working class, in or out of jobs, were beginning to see that—now there would be good news indeed.


Gang of Another Four

Admirers of Jenkins, Williams, Owen and Rodgers will not welcome the emergence of another Gang of Four; in fact they will probably find it positively embarrassing. But it makes an interesting story.

It is all happening in Islington, in London, where a short time ago there was a mass defection of councillors from the Labour Party to the SDP which gave the SDP control over the council. For some time before this, the Labour Party in Islington had been notorious for its Tammany-style of operations about which, perhaps in the interests of clinging leech-like to office, the Labour Party at large did nothing significant. So there may have been some relief among their members, when the Labour leeches on the council transferred their attention to another body.

Now the blood is beginning to flow from the SDP. The national party has expelled four of the Islington councillors who recently prevented the council settling the new rates by leaving the chamber before the vote was taken. Thus mucking about with the financial juggling of the little bit of capitalism called Islington was a grave offence.

This new Gang of Four responded by deciding to stand at the coming local elections as Independent Social Democrats, although they had in any case already been rejected as candidates by the local SDP branch. This was another grave offence so the Four had to go.

Such brawls are not uncommon in the cockpit of capitalist politics. Members of capitalist parties are elected to office by workers who, ignorant of the realities of the social system, accept their pledges to be able to improve things like housing and local and social services.

When the economic laws of capitalism intrude into this delusion, and the election promises are exposed, the party comes under stress, which often results in recriminations, splits, expulsions.

The SDP promised that, in breaking the mould of traditional politics, they would not experience this. Now they arc themselves exposing this myth, showing that they are basically no different from the parties they split from.

And all this, mark you, before they have any agreed policies. Whatever will happen, we might ask, when the great day arrives and the SDP actually stand for something other than vague pomposities?

The Attempted Suppression of Free Speech in Islington. (1911)

Party News from the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The attempt of the Islington Borough Council to suppress Socialist propaganda in their midst has proved ineffectual. Refused the hall of the Caledonian-road Baths, the Islington Branch of the Socialist Party commemorated the 40th. anniversary of the Paris Commune on Monday, March 20, at Myddleton Hall, Almeida Street. N. The meeting was largely attended, and, unlike so many Tory and Liberal gatherings, was marked by equal enthusiasm and orderliness.

Islington ratepayers may with advantage be reminded of the circumstances that led to this futile effort on the part of their municipal representatives to dictate what subjects may or may not be discussed in the borough.

In March last year our Islington comrades applied for and were granted the use of the Caledonian-road Baths for Commune-commemoration purposes. A deputation of ratepayers thereupon waited upon the Council to protest against the letting of the hall and to urge that our contract should be illegally cancelled. Their spokesman melodramatically predicted that, as the result of our teaching, the streets of Islington would be ”bathed in blood.” By a majority of sixteen the Council rejected the deputation’s appeal. Our meeting was held and was officially reported by the superintendent of the Baths as having been “conducted in a very quiet and orderly manner.”

Moreover, despite bourgeois apprehensions, the streets of the “merrie” mediaeval suburb did not run with blood. As a matter of fact, they did not even run with water, then or since; and, notwithstanding legitimate complaint, the filth which disfigured them in 1910 may be seen, with a year’s accretion, in 1911. So wretched an environment has its natural reflex in the conduct of certain residents and their elected representatives. To what other opinion can one come, after reading these observations from the Council’s discussion published in the Islington Daily Gazette of March 21, 1910 (italics ours):         

    “Alderman. Crole-Rees held that they ought to cancel, rule or no rule, whatever the cost might be. It was a sacrilege to hold such a gathering in the baths.
   Alderman. Vorley thought technicalities ought not to stand in the way of cancelling. The meeting was not political—it was revolutionary, and something near to treason.
   Mr. A. O. Clarke said any damages that might be obtained from the Council would be remote and small."

That is to say, break the law of contract as against Socialists and trust the courts to uphold such breach.

The Islington Daily Gazette, an avowedly anti-Socialist paper, expressed in unstinted terms, in its issue of March 23, 1910, its view of the matter. The editor wrote:

    "We are a little surprised that the Islington Borough Council should have made itself look ridiculous in the eyes of the public by endeavouring to prevent a meeting.  . . . The conduct of the meeting has proved how childish were the objections raised in the Council to the letting of the hall to the Socialist Party. . . . The uninitiated might have thought, after listening to the debate on Friday night at the Town Hall, that the Socialists of England were suddenly overcome with blood lust.”

Yet, in defiance of the ridicule and censure thus heaped upon last year’s attempt to suppress free speech, the Council did not hesitate to reject this year’s application by our Islington comrades for the same meeting-place. The Baths and Wash-houses Committee wrote: “ Having regard to the fact that a large number of ratepayers objected to the meeting held last year at the Public Hall, and that a deputation waited upon the Council to protest against the meeting, the Committee do not feel justified in letting the hall again for the purpose named ”

On this refusal becoming known, Mr. B S. Bailey, an Islington ratepayer, published in the Islington Daily Gazette of March 14, 1911 an emphatic protest and a stinging rebuke of the Council’s own disregard of the amenities of public life. He said :

   "I attended the Commune meeting held at the Baths last year, and I say (and challenge contradiction) that it was the most orderly and best conducted meeting that has been held in Islington by any political party. Surely a deputation of a dozen bigoted ratepayers and the Borough Council are not going to place themselves on a pedestal and tell us what we shall hear and what we shall not hear. . . .  I would advise our servants (and I hope the Council will not object to this description since they address themselves as such when appealing for our suffrage at elections) to conduct their meetings in as orderly a manner as the Socialist Party, then we shall not have so many bear-garden meetings, for which West Islington is notorious.”

We ourselves were as little surprised at the absurd protest of the deputation as we are unmoved by the foolish action of the Council. The Paris Commune, alike in its mistakes and its achievements, is to us a guiding cresset. That alone would make it an object of hatred and fear to capitalism, the antagonism of whose puny champions, therefore, appears in our view not less natural than contemptible. How expect such dunces to know, or care for, the truth? No doubt, they willingly believe the deliberate lie that the Conmune caused the streets of Paris to run with blood. But, in very fact, the 1871 massacres were the work of the cowardly French master class and their criminal hangers-on. When these found heart to return from flight, with the support of their German conquerers, they were maddened at the successful efforts of the proletariat to direct, as themselves had failed to do, the machinery of administration. So they glutted their vengeance in a popular butchery, which ceased only through fear of a pestilence from the growing heaps of slain.

As the British heirs of those brave dead, brutally sacrificed to class interests, we welcome from the myrmidons of Capital any earnest of the class struggle already long declared. It is enough that with them fraternise the Social-Democrats, the Labourites, and other spurious friends of the exploited and oppressed worker. For us it is battle now and all the time!

The truth is, those struggling tradesman and professional snobs of Islington — parasites on parasites — obey blindly the preservative instincts engendered by our iniquitous system. They are slowly but surely being crushed between the upper and nether millstones of economic development, and their desperate hope to “get on” is only paralleled by their abject fear of “falling out.” Sycophants to their “betters,” bullies to their "inferiors,” they seek a frantic sanctuary in property, sacrificing to Mammon their present peace, their children’s future, and the whole welfare of their kind.

They hate the proletariat, because through the slightest mishap they may themselves be proletarianised. They oppress the toilers, because through their exploitation only can they hope to attain economic safety. And they, who scarcely know a night’s rest free from business worry, warn the still more miserable wage-slave to beware of Socialism. They are whited sepulchres from which judgment and conscience have been snatched. Is it other than madness to bolster up the competitive system when even a capitalist organ like the Daily News (March 23, 1911), in dealing editorially with the appalling universal increase of suicide, admits that to-day “even to live with an independent income is more of a strain than to struggle for a living was a century ago.”

Workers, we are out to destroy this man-made hell on earth. We can show you that the greatest of our social evils are directly traceable to the fundamental wrong of stealing from you the product of your work. We ask you to unite with us for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth.

A. Hoskyns

My Election Contest With Jeremy Corbyn (2015)

From the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our candidate who stood against Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North at the general election looks at his politics.

After seeing off the challenge of the Socialist Party at the general election, Jeremy Corbyn clearly feels himself invincible, taking on all -comers and challenging for the leadership of the Labour Party. To some he is the left-wing rejuvenator of true Labour values; for others, he is the lunatic left and ultimate Islington socialist.

Often at hustings in previous elections, I had found myself clearly more radical than the cautious Labour candidate, as they tried to control expectations, and put forward achievable demands. Against Jeremy Corbyn (along with a fairly radical Green candidate, and a Tory smart enough to talk to the needs of the constituency), this wasn’t the case. It would often depend on who got their turn in first, to put a radical anti-capitalist analysis of the problems of health care, housing, mental health or education.

One event illustrates this neatly. We were asked for a song that epitomised our campaign. After deciding that my own preference, Slayer’s ‘War Ensemble’, wouldn’t quite cover it, I fell back on what I knew would be most Socialist Party member’s preference: John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. As it happened, I was asked before Corbyn was, and he would have chosen the same song.

Throughout the campaign, people asked me why we were standing against Jeremy Corbyn, since ‘he is a socialist.’ I wrote a letter to the local press, pointing out that whatever he stood for, he would still a member of a party that explicitly supports capitalism. The last sentence, that a vote for Corbyn was a vote for poverty and unemployment was mysteriously excised by the paper (surely not for reasons of space). I noted several times that despite his opposition to nuclear weapons, and the fact that he would vote against it, a vote for him would (in effect) be a vote for a Labour Prime Minister committed to replacing Trident.

He clearly takes some pride in his rebellious voting record. Normally, as befits a comfortable incumbent who is certain to win, he was able to shrug off my barbs and jibes (indeed, he affably accepted that our campaign was happening and never himself asked why we were standing against him). When, however, I mentioned our Party’s democratic policy of binding mandates for delegates, he took umbrage at the idea of MPs voting as instructed. The fact that his party is not itself democratically organised does at least excuse his position.

He is certainly a passionate advocate of the needs of the poor: throughout the campaign he would come back to the notion that children should have warm dry beds to sleep in; he raised the issue of the horrific drowning of economic migrants in the Mediterranean (instead of merely focusing on local bread and butter issues); he linked mental health issues of poverty and exploitation. It was clear he knew his patch well, and, again, gazumped me by rattling off the same facts about Islington that I’d spent my time researching and learning. The problem, though, is not his analysis of the problems of capitalism, but his approach to trying to resolve them.

An example: at one hustings a very local matter came up. It was a detailed and specific question about the renovation of a council estate in Islington, and the apparent withdrawal of councillors from liaison with the tenants and their proposed designs. I hadn’t heard of the matter, even in the local press, and didn’t know the facts. My cold reading of the matter was that it was probably down to public administration law, and the nature of state property as private property of the council. Corbyn, who mercifully answered before me on this one, confirmed as much, noting that the tenants’ interests had to be balanced against the overall needs of Islington’s property estate.

When it comes down to it, he is better described as a statist, rather than a socialist (in our terms). He believes in state action: laws to reduce knife crime; public ownership of the NHS rather than private ownership; controls on rents and security of tenancy; expansion of council housing, etc.. He confirmed as much after the election, describing the Miliband manifesto as ‘basically good’. Indeed, a look at his Labour leadership campaign manifesto shows that he is far from being the frothing radical the right-wing press love to depict him as. In his response to Osborne’s July budget, he wrote: ‘I am calling for a people's quantitative easing – and asking my fellow candidates to join me in that call… The Bank of England must be given a new mandate to upgrade our economy to invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects.’ Put another way: his leadership would be just Harold Wilson warmed up.

The real source of his radical image is his persistent stance on foreign policy. First, backing dialogue with Sinn Fein back in the 1980’s, and nowadays being at the forefront of campaigns for the Palestinians. Indeed, one clear point of attack from some within the Labour Party has been the meeting he addressed where he welcomes ‘our friends’ from Hamas and Hezbollah. When questioned about that on Channel Four news, his response was to aggressively pushback, and try and get the issue back to resolving the Israel Palestine conflict. There’s no doubt that he is a passionate advocate for peace, but also, clearly, a practical politician willing to work with the existing ruling groups, but he is clearly in hock to the dismal ideology of nationalism and national liberation.

The right wing press has gone mad over him. Some Tories, taking advantage of the Labour Party’s new open primary system of electing a leader, where anyone can pay three pounds to become a ‘Labour supporter’ (and sign a declaration that they are not a supporter of any other party) and get to vote, gleefully announced that they would join up and vote for Corbyn, because he will take the Labour Party into the wilderness for decades to come. The reality, perception aside, is that Corbyn is simply a traditional Labour MP, who puts forward the case for state intervention in a capitalist economy. The only thing he does differently, is that he believes in putting the case openly, instead of pitching to a marketing strategy in order to win power to make reforms on the quiet.

He is a decent, intelligent and committed politician, but he wouldn’t have survived in politics so long without a certain amount of steel. If he surprises everyone by winning the leadership, he could surprise the gloating smooth-faced Tory mockers by actually winning a general election. The biggest, surprise, though, would be just what a staid, unradical government it would be in reality. There would be noise, but the detail is clear, he would have to work within the possibilities of capitalism and its overall profitability. We’ve seen it before in the 1960s.

If he does triumph in the leadership election it will be because the process of installing increasingly sophisticated party and electorate management policies by the Labour leadership have run out of steam, and the desires of workers (however misinformed and locked into the logic of markets) will have forced their way into the halls of power. The media and party managers cannot paper over the lived experience of millions in this country who feel they have no voice nor control.

If he does become Prime Minister, I’ll be telling people it’s all my fault, until then, I’ll continue doing my best to stop him.

Bill Martin