The 2008 Mayoral and Greater London Assembly elections are likely to offer little choice for working class people in London.

For mayor, there will be Ken Livingstone, who proved he'd turned his back on workers when he said that RMT members should cross picket lines - and he's supposed to be on our side!

We're likely to have Boris Johnson for the Tory party. As well as being a jibbering idiot, his background and politics are a million miles away from the poverty and problems that working-class Londoners face.

There will be Labour candidates for the GLA seats. And we don't need to tell you how Labour have abandoned their concern for working-class issues: we can see that by the last ten years of a Labour government. They've brought privatisation to the Tube, the NHS and even schools, when we want publically owned public services; they've taken us to war with Iraq ... the list goes on.

We need candidates who will stand up for working class issues. How can we call this a democracy, where working class people have no-one to represent us?

RMT activists have started to talk about putting forward candidates for the election. At a time when the postal service is on strike for its survival as a public service, when pensioners live in poverty, the health and education system is under attack, when local councils are scrambling to sell off council-owned housing while homelessness soars in London ... the RMT should unite with campaigners on these issues. By uniting various issues facing working-class people under one banner, we can be part of the effort to plug the hole left in our democracy when Labour turned its back on the working class.

If there is a set of candidates that actually represent working-class interests, more people will actually bother to go out and vote - which could be crucial in preventing the fascist scum of the BNP from getting a seat on the GLA.

But some RMT activists plan to run on the single issue, 'Keep London Transport Public and Safe'. This is a worthy campaign, and will provide RMT with an opportunity to do some serious public campainging, which it often neglects. But we are not just fighting for a single issue for our union members - we are fighting against what happens when a Labour party turns its back on working class issues. We are fighting for representation, to have a voice in our democracy.

One RMT branch has already called for RMT candidates to be part of a broader campaign. Tubeworker thinks that the RMT should issue a call to other unions and community campaigns to involve them from the beginning and should make the manifesto speak to various issues confronting the working class.

We have produced a motion about this. If you agree with us, e-mail us [1] for a copy, and propose it at your branch.