A letter from the Social Justice Party’s candidate for Scarborough and Whitby and National Secretary Asa Jones reflecting on the General Election and the next steps for the party:

From little acorns

Now that we’ve had a few weeks to recover, it’s worthwhile taking a look at our General Election performance and consider what we do next.

The Social Justice Party stood one candidate in Scarborough and Whitby. I believe it’s fair to say that if the election had been called at a later date, we could have selected a few more candidates and raised funds for their campaigns. In Scarborough and Whitby, we received 285 votes. More than quadrupling the number of known supporters in the constituency, indicating that there is a core of local voters connecting with our manifesto and policies providing a decent platform to build on.

As a very new political party, our campaign faced a number of factors which limited our success. These included a lack of funding, shortage of local activists, a lack of name recognition on top of the election being called so early.

Despite this our campaign managed to: get a leaflet delivered to every household in the constituency; carry out a targeted leaflet drop inviting voters from Osgodby, Eastfield and Crossgates to a public meeting; run a stall in Scarborough town centre and some targeted canvassing in Scarborough and along with support from Redcar and Cleveland Branch in Whitby.

In addition, our campaign team ran a robust social media campaign mostly on Facebook which targeted local voters. This has resulted in a big increase in traffic to our party’s social media pages which we need to make the most of going forward.

An initial SJP manifesto and prioritised policy statements were produced at pace to ensure the SJP had a manifesto for the campaign. Members will get the opportunity to develop our policy platform at the next party Conference in the Autumn.

I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has made our campaign in Scarborough and Whitby possible. What we’ve done is set a foundation for our future endeavours and I have been left with a passion to make sure we do better in the future.

Our next steps

We must now consider what happens next. The S&W Branch will be undertaking a consultation with members and supporters to develop a document that can be used at future elections that provides details about the practical steps that need to be taken but also provides advice around campaign strategy. 

The S&W Branch will also be making preparations for the next electoral opportunity on the calendar which is the Scarborough Town Council elections in spring 2025. This will be the next opportunity for us to build on our support and try and achieve some electoral success.

The National Co-ordinating Committee will be looking into all the various attempts to unite the left, which there is clearly a desire for amongst the left-wing activists I have met across the country over the last few months. The NCC’s goal at this stage is fact finding. We have representatives attending meetings of Collective, Campaign for a Mass Workers Party, For the Many Campaign, the TUSC and Jamie Driscoll’s new project.

Any decisions around the SJP’s relationship with any of these groups or their plans will be decided by the party membership. For the moment, we aim to keep ourselves as in-the-loop as possible with all organisations and parties and develop a detailed understanding of the opportunities that are arising.

I have said for a while that the really exciting stuff will happen after the General Election, we are now at that stage and we need as many people on-board to help us make the most of the next few years.

In solidarity and unity,

Asa Jones

Social Justice Party Secretary

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