I went over to Preston to canvass for Michael Lavalette on election day, 5 May, despite the fact that he’s in the SWP and my politics are closer to that of the Socialist Party. I finished writing a new newsletter of the Foundation for Proportional Representation-based Socialism on 5 May, and got 1,000 copies produced (A4 colour, double-sided), for distribution on and after election day (paid for out of my own money).

I went along to Lavalette’s office, within the Preston ward in which he was standing, at about 6pm. Everyone apart from one man (a grim-faced SWP member clearly) was really friendly towards me and eager to take and read my newsletter. They were sorting out people to go “knocking up” people who had said they would vote for Lavalette (or were likely to possibly) who had not yet voted, as is the usual practice in hard-fought election campaigns.

The grim-faced man kept on trying to encourage me to leave my rucksack containing the newsletters in the office while going out, and when I insisted on taking newsletters to distribute, he was adamant that I couldn’t. A friendly woman in the office (who was manipulating the computer containing voters’ details) backed him up, but said she’d phone Michael Lavalette himself to get his say-so. I’d posted a link to the newsletter on Lavalette’s Facebook wall, but he hadn’t read it when I spoke to him; the friendly woman mentioned that I was from the Foundation for Proportional Representation-based Socialism, which I guess explained his hostility seeing that the SWP has not traditionally been in favour of PR – but it’s great that they have finally come out in favour of it, but not necessarily under socialism, when (wrongly IMO) arguing against AV.

Asking for Lavalette’s say so was fair enough, and he (seemingly flustered) insisted that I couldn’t distribute the newsletters “because it would confuse people”. I’ve heard the same arguments against selling socialist newspapers, even Socialist Worker, from SWP organisers previously when canvassing. Actually, you can understand why they don’t want potential voters to read Socialist Worker, when you experience the degree of loathing from nice working (and middle) class people towards the SWP, as I encountered when I happened to mention that Lavalette was an SWP member (which I stopped doing since I didn’t want to hurt his chances). [And from Militant organisers incidentally when we were knocking people up in the desperate Walton by-election where "Real Labour" candidate Lesley Mahmood got 2,600 votes after we predicted we were going to beat New Labour's hatchet man Peter Kilfoyle.] Talk that the priority is to get the vote out misses the point that we’re not going to convince them to vote for us if we don’t use the arguments that we need to use to win them over.

Anyway, I went along with Lavalette, who ridiculously suggested me leaving the newsletters in the office so they could distribute them to all their voters after the election (as if they would anyway), and distributed about 400 of the newsletters door-to-door, including in two large blocks of flats, one extremely run-down and the other less so. As often happens when infiltrators on the side of big business try to hinder the struggle to change society, they end up helping the cause anyway – far more people got the newsletter than would have done if I had been allowed to distribute the newsletter when “knocking up”.

[Incidentally, the grim-faced man got really angry when I pointed out two other infiltrators, the previous two national secretaries of the SWP before Charlie Kimber (who I don't think I have ever met but a Weekly Worker article pointed out his lack of charisma, not that John Rees or Martin Smith had any of that either). Rees was (almost single-handedly) responsible for the split in Respect and rumours were circulated by SWP central committee members about Smith's alleged "stalking" sex offences to ensure that he stepped aside amicably unlike Rees who left to set up Counterfire (along with other ex-SWP members who seem to have created a much better organisation). It worked, and Smith is still on the SWP CC and still loyally writes articles for Socialist Worker and Socialist Review.]

Anyway, as you can see from the result below, Lavalette narrowly lost his seat (partly due to Labour Party members illegally handing out election leaflets within a school where the polling station was situated – if Lavalette’s agent wants to challenge the election result in the courts, I’d be happy to testify about that). My intervention wasn’t enough, but I tried my best.

When I went to Lavalette’s Facebook wall later to find out the result (which he had posted there), I discovered that he had deleted the link to the newsletter and removed me as a friend. Well, I don’t regard him as a friend of mine either any more!

Result in Preston (Town Centre ward): 

Lab 964; TUSC 840 (39.8%); Con 305

[Note that I've campaigned for Lavalette at a previous election, which he won, and it wasn't the town centre. Switching to the town centre, with its mixture of fairly affluent properties and run-down flats, could have been a shrewd move, but he didn't win.]