Socialist party candidate recieves 12 % in recent by-election

As socialists we are fielding some of our own candidates in this coming council elections and well even though we dont expect to win many seats that is not the real objective i might add the article below i have found in our paper - the socialist represents a real anger and fightback from ordinary working class people that they will look to other alternatives after finding the main 3 parties with the same policies and results.

If you would like to read more where this article came from please visit www.socialistparty.org.uk

"Socialist Party member and former councillor Ian Page received 12% of the vote in last weeks byelection in the Bellingham ward in Lewisham, south London. This support for Ian is a warning to Labour councils that are making cuts. Working people are growing tired of their excuses! "

Martin Powell-Davies, Lewisham Socialist Party

Lewisham Council is making £88 million of cuts over the next four years, slashing jobs and services. Labour councillors want to put all the blame on the Con-Dems.

In Bellingham, for now at least the anger against this government of millionaires has given Labour a victory - but for how much longer?

Lewisham Socialist Party, standing on a joint ticket with Lewisham People Before Profit, understood that many voters would want to punish the Tories and Lib Dems. But our message was clear - that you can't trust Labour to resist their attacks.

Voting for Ian Page, our anti-cuts candidate, was the best way to send a message to all the main parties that a working-class area like Bellingham needs councillors who will fight for their community and against all cuts.

In a few weeks, we secured a real base of support in a ward where we had not previously campaigned. We could point to Ian's campaigning record as a socialist councillor in Telegraph Hill ward, but Bellingham is at the other end of the borough.

After this result, the other parties will have to recognise that we are a force to be reckoned with right across Lewisham. On the doorsteps and the street stalls there was growing support from local people for our anti-cuts message.

Hatred for the government was mixed with anger at Labour councillors who are carrying out the Tories' dirty work - slashing jobs, closing libraries and privatising children's centres.

The low byelection turnout (22%) reflected a mood amongst many that they couldn't trust anyone to defend them. But our 12% vote - close behind both Tories and Lib Dems - shows that we persuaded many others not to stay angrily indoors on election day but to vote for a real alternative.

While both the Lib Dems and Labour tried to present Ian as an 'outsider', it was the Labour canvassers in suits that looked most out of place in Bellingham.

One Labour councillor was so lost that she had to come up to our stall for directions. 'I'm meant to be meeting the Labour team outside the Housing Office' she explained. 'Yes, but you closed it', came our reply - pointing to the boarded up office behind us!

When Ian finally finished knocking on people's doors, he realised he had dropped the keys to his scooter. A group of lads came out of one of the houses to say they had found them and taken them safely indoors. When they realised it was Ian, they said that their family had voted for him. That's working-class solidarity!

At the town hall election count, Labour looked relieved but we were smiling. Lewisham's Labour councillors know that trade unionists and the community are already organising against their cuts.

Now they will have to start looking over their left shoulders for a socialist challenge at the ballot box as well.

Labour 1100 51%
Tory 340 16%
Lib Dem 334 16%
Ian Page SP/LPBP 264 12%
Greens 100 5%
Turnout 22%

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i personally feel these results although labour won this seat here shows that people are not totally satisfied with them and will come out and vote for a rael left alternative who is fighting for a socialist alternative. I think this shows the anger not just at the tories but also labour too on a local level who are continuing to cut public servicesa nd ringing their hands and saying they have no choice. Of course they have a choice they can say no and build a mass campaign with local support which will surely follow. Much like what the Labour party did in Lambeth and Liverpool in the 80's

The pro's and con's to BBC's comic relief

So it is the time of year again where every celebrity with a record out in the charts or a new book to sell gets their ugly mug in front of the camara fora bit of publicity for waht is a good cause ultimatly.

Call my cynical in my not so old age but have we lost the meaning of things like Comic Relief and Children in need ? The format which hasnt changed for years focus's on certain parts of the world where people are dying or have problems getting by be that through disease or extreme povety.

As a socialist i need not remind people that the povety in the 3rd world as the capitalists like to call it even though we all do live in the same world even though you wouldnt know it sometimes. is all down to the obsurd system we live under called capitalism .

As Mahat Magandi rightly said we have enough on this planet for everyones need but not enough for everybody's greed. This is perfectly put i feel and strikes a chord with me and i hope you to. For years the western nations run charity projects like this there are so many from Oxfam to Children in Need even those that aim to cure crippling diseases like AIDS in Africa. The thing that gets me when i watch television charity fundraisers like this is how ridiculous our world is when we clearly do have the wealth and the means to abolish 3rd world povety by re addressing the balance of economic power handing the wealth to the many not the few but we never do.

People cry about how bad povety is yet capitalism still rules the way sadly. The only way we can eradicate povety in the world is by bringing abotu a socialist change a internationalisation of socialism which is not just a single socialist state which you might say Cuba is today socialism, for it to florish there must be a international solidarity feel to socialism this is where the CWI
Committee for a Workers' International
http://www.socialistworld.net/

comes about linking up socialism with lots of countries around the worlda nd spreading its word.

But going back to my original point showsl ike Comic Relief although highlighting the good work done by campaigners tryign to deal with povety it will only ever go so far. Our pledges of donations to these causes will only go so far it is a systematic change that needs to come about. Letting these countries play their part in the worlda and not having the West's trade restrictions holding them back.

I applaud every effort shows like Comic Relief make but we must remember to go further we must call for bigger change than just bigger donations.

Looking into some green socialist ideas

Over the recent months and weeks i've been reading into a few more green issues. As we all know the capitalist system of the west is crumbling at the knees and the global financial crisis is just the start of this i feel.
I have read and wrote lots about the banking crisis that kicked off this global recession which has affected the west including america and europe the hardest it would seem.

So i thought i'd take a look at how the financial crisis and how the crumbling of capitlism is affecting the world we live in and how i believe that green socialist ideas can help us retain our planet and look towards creating more jobs for parts of the world that struggle to keep up with the leading countries.

Among other such red green groups i have stumbled across the Alliance for green socialism at this address
http://www.greensocialist.org.uk/ags/

I have found some of their thoughts and publications very interesting indeed.

With all the news being dominated by financial matters i thought i'd detail some of the green issues that will have been forgotton about during all the pandimoniam of the money crisis.

It is so easy to loose sight of the world around us at times. Especially when we take it for granted. When money becomes in shorter supply green environmental issues often become the first to get pushed to the back of the queue sadly.
But for example the conservative lead coalition in great britian is looking to sell off a lage amount of woodland to private investors. This is very worrying and no doubt some rich benifactors will come in and build a Centre parc's type complex on many of them.


This again is all for profit and not thinking of the environmental impact of waht building on our old and often stunning woodland.
We are lucky to live in a country with such rich countryside and woodland but we must aim to protect what we have. The invention of industry and expansion of population has created greater need for more housing this is all very well i agree we do need socail housing and a lot more of this but we must not loose sight of the fact we are destroying a lot of our natural environment.

As Caroline Lucas rightly pointed out at a recent New Economics Foundation speech i attended called where has all our money gone. Cleverly titled i think.
SHe raised the point that with the intense growth of the western world and capitialism in the west and our drive for profit has had a direct impact on global warming and the impact we have had on our planet. She states that we will soon run out of food in the west as we consume far too much at the moment and it is simply unsustainable in the current financial climate. With temperatures on the planet rising year on year out it will not be long before the plains in america producing wheat and crops will be unfarmable in years to come. This will become common across large parts of areas of the world where food is grow and farmed. As a result i believe the west will fall into a food shortage. With a steadily increasing world population and a growing need to consume more and more i simply dont see this as the west being able to carry on in the rate it is going.
This is where my socialist theories come in. From reading a lot from Karl Marx in the recent months i realise that he too had some green ideas and that his views on the world contained a care for the planet as well as the appression of the poor.

So my ideas would be to aid the west and to bridge the gap between a failing capitalist society woudl be to introduce green jobs for people who are unemployed and are struggling to find jobs in the present climate. We will of course as global warming doesnt look like going away anytime soon and untill the big pulluting nations in the world start to curb their pollution we will have to adapt to living in a warmer planet with more extreme weather conditions.

As we have seen over recent days in the UK our airports and our trains and transport system simply cant cope when we get a lot of snow. So i propose creating some green jobs for people, if we truely had a government who cared about our country and environment they would invest money into creating green jobs and in greener technologies. This could not only help balance the shift in economic power from the east to west with China pulling away as the worlds leading economy but we could provide good solid jobs for our workers in this country who are currently struggling to find jobs.

I also propose the creation of a green bank. Publically owned of course in the public domain so we the people have the control over it and rich bankers dont come in and take it over and take advantage of it again.
We need a system that is going to work for people firstly and a system that is fair for all. It has been talked about a green bank before but we must be strong with these ideas and push the ideas forward in the direction of government to listen to us. Green socialist ideas can work i feel and even if not fully implimented then we can certainly learn a lot from the ideas of eco-idealists.

I just wondered waht peoples thoughts were as we go forward into the future where they see our planet and its resources going in 10, 100 + years time. I think we need to change our ways dramatically to have any chance of surviving into the future myself. What do you think ?