General Elections

Council elections

The council elections on 4 May were a disaster for the Labour Party, but not wholly surprising. As is the norm these days, turnout was low, and there was a worrying increase in support for the BNP in certain areas.

Why has this happened? TW reckons the vast majority of people in Britain are...

Respect makes gains as “Muslim party”

By John Bloxam DESPITE losing seats, New Labour retained control of Tower Hamlets Council on 4 May, winning 26 seats and a bare majority of the total 51. Significantly, many of the cabinet members most closely associated with the Tory policies pursued by the previous New Labour administration were defeated – notably the Council leader and lead member for Housing. Although damaged by their record and incompetence, as well as national events, New Labour had pulled out the stops to retain control of the Council. This included a U-turn over Crossrail building works in the Brick Lane area, which...

Who speaks for us?

by John Leach In Spring next year, we get to vote for our Councillors. Hackney Solidarity will stand in this election, giving people the chance to vote for socialist candidates who support Hackney working-class interests. We should be entitled to vote for the things we want: good services, not cuts and privatisation; improved council housing, not neglected estates; better, more accountable local schools, not private sponsors; democratic accountabliity, not ‘arms-length’ quangos. Working-class people need a political voice against the vested interests of big business, the rich - and Hackney...

Ballot-rigging in Birmingham

By Dave Jessop Six Birmingham Labour councillors have been found guilty of corruption and a systematic attempt to rig the 2004 city council elections. The Election Commissioner, Richard Mawrey QC, said he was in no doubt that there had been a city-wide campaign by the Birmingham Labour Party to use thousands of bogus postal votes to counter the adverse impact of the Iraq war on Muslim communities in inner city wards. Mawrey found that Labour candidates and supporters had stolen, forged and fiddled postal votes on “an industrial scale” and were helped by the almost total absence of security...

A socialist challenge in Nottingham East

In 2001 Pete Radcliff stood for the now defunct Socialist Alliance in Nottingham East. He polled over one thousand in the constituency (one of the best SA results in the country). This time round Pete will be standing in the name of the Socialist Green Unity Coalition. This is a coalition of five left groups. The key idea of the campaign is to to give a voice to the mass of working class people who have been betrayed by New Labour by highlighting issues such as pensions, education, asylum, health, crime, trade unions, environment and war. The coalition wants to see working class political...

Joint policy statement by SGUC

Socialist Green Unity Coalition : IN THE looming general election a joint campaign against Blair is being mounted by five left parties and some independent socialists. These will put forward an alternative to the right-wing policies of privatisation, war and environmental destruction offered by both the major parties and the Liberal Democrats too. We believe that the New Labour party of Blair and Brown has deprived the working class of political representation, and we want to restore a workers’ voice in politics. We believe MPs should earn the average wage of a skilled worker and we are...

Against Bush, but US workers need their own party

The voice of the militant class struggle left in America may seem too quiet and abstract to bother with. But the future of American working-class politics, and of the world, lies with them. There is just over a month to go before the US Presidential election. As someone said recently: this is an election in which everyone in the world would like a vote, but only the American people actually have a vote. Many millions of people around the world would relish an opportunity to vote out George Bush and his cowboy foreign policy: invade now and think about the consequences later. Saddam’s fascistic...

Cut the roots of fascism

Note: this article includes details of the forthcoming by-election in Dagenham where the BNP threaten to win another seat. Far right wins in E. London and soars in Germany. Cut the roots of fascism - fight for a workers' government! On 16 September, the fascist British National Party won a council by-election in Barking, East London, with over 50% of the vote. It was a ward which the BNP did not even bother to contest at the last full council elections, in 2002. Then, Labour won all the ward's three council seats easily, with between 847 and 778 votes to 520 and 509 for the Lib Dems, the only...

European left: Some new alliances and some bad old ways

How did the European left fare in the June elections? Martin Thomas reports The results Two point six per cent in France, 5.8% in Italy, 8.1% in Denmark, 7% in the Netherlands, 5.2% in Scotland, 4.9% in Portugal... I do not know of any significant radical-left electoral efforts in the new EU member states of Eastern Europe, but in some west European states, at least, there were some scores for the radical left in June's Euro-elections better than those which parties to the left of the Communist and Socialist parties got in the 1970s. Then, although far-left groups generally had more, and more...

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