Election coalition launched

Submitted by Matthew on 5 February, 2010 - 9:38 Author: Gareth Munro

The Socialist Party has launched a “Trade Union and Socialist Coalition” (TUSC) for the general election. Seeing itself as a successor organisation to the “No2EU” slate, TUSC has so far failed to achieve significant trade union backing: Bob Crow is involved in a personal capacity, but the RMT Executive decided to concentrate on re-electing its sponsored MPs. Although the SWP have said they want to participate, the SP remains the only significant force formally involved. The CPB/Morning Star group also pulled out of the negotiations which established the coalition, which were criticised by others on the left for their secret and backroom nature.

TUSC’s platform is made up of unobjectionable and largely worthwhile reformist demands, but is notable for the absence of any positive demands around migrant workers’ and asylum seekers’ rights or European workers’ unity. This is seen by many, including Workers’ Liberty, as a further concession to the soft-xenophobic, left-nationalist politics that characterised No2EU.

In Liverpool, AWL members were able to positively amend TUSC’s local programme to include more internationalist demands, but elsewhere meetings have been more unilateral and less democratic. Whether TUSC will have any real, independent, democratic life on the ground remains to be seen.

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