For a working-class voice in Parliament! For a workers' MP on a worker's wage!
Support our socialist candidate against Harriet Harman!
Elect Jill Mountford in Camberwell & Peckham
In the next general election, socialist activist Jill Mountford will be standing against New Labour deputy leader and cabinet minister Harriet Harman in the south east London constituency of Camberwell and Peckham.
More than ever in the midst of wage cuts, job losses and repossessions, working-class people need MPs who will represent us and help us fight for their interests - not four or five more years of New Labour careerists serving the bosses and the rich in a way almost indistinguishable from the Tories.
Despite her claims to be a "democratic socialist" and "feminist", Harman is a government loyalist with a truly appalling voting record.
In 1998, as Secretary of State for Social Security, she oversaw New Labour's cut in single parent benefit, throwing thousands upon thousands of single parents deeper into poverty. She has not rebelled against the Government once, voting for student tuition fees, privatisation in the NHS and schools, the Iraq war and all the rest.
In 2008, this self-styled fighter for women's rights oversaw the government's use of Parliamentary procedures to prevent MPs from even voting on an amendment to extend abortion rights to women in Northern Ireland.
Harman's combined salary is more than £100,000 a year. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she recently proposed to exempt MPs' expenses from the Freedom of Information Act.
Jill Mountford has lived in south east London and worked as a community worker for almost twenty years. She has been active in the labour movement all that time. She was national organiser of the Welfare State Network, set up in the 1990s to demand that Labour rebuild public services and the welfare state, and is now an activist in the public sector union Unison.
Jill is a socialist and a feminist, and a member of the socialist group Workers' Liberty. She is running in this election to rebuild political representation for working-class people; if elected, she will take only the average worker's wage and donate the rest to labour movement and community campaigns.
She is standing to oppose the bosses' attempts to make us pay for their economic crisis, supporting workers’ and working-class community struggles; to demand decent jobs, homes and public services for all; and to fight for a workers' government, a government based on and accountable to the workers' movement that serves the working class as the Tories and New Labour in office have served the bosses and the rich. She wants to see capitalism replaced with a socialist society run in the interests of people, not profit.
Please get in touch with our campaign, and get involved!
Jill’s policies
These are demands which the workers' movement and left can fight for now, policies for working-class political representatives to put forward and a program for a workers' government to put into practice.
Jobs, homes and services for all
Create jobs for all by cutting work hours with no loss of pay, and creating millions of jobs in public services. Open the bosses’ books: nationalise companies which cut jobs, under workers’ control.
Stop and reverse cuts and privatisations. Restore the NHS. Nationalise the drug industry. No to Academies, a good local secular comprehensive school for every child. Free education from nursery to university. Living student grants.
An urgent mass programme of council house building and repairs.
A decent income for all, attack poverty and inequality
No to wage cuts, for wages that rise at least in line with inflation. A minimum wage of two-thirds median male earnings (£9 an hour) without exceptions.
Shift the tax burden from workers to the rich and business, abolish tax for the least well off. Tax the rich!
Benefits should be enough to live on and rise in line with earnings or prices, whichever is higher. Oppose New Labour’s attacks on the unemployed, disabled and long-term sick.
For the right to retire at maximum 60 on a decent pension. Level up private sector pensions to the best public sector provision. Restore the link between the basic state pension and earnings now.
Take over the banks
Nationalise all the banks and sack their bosses to create single, publicly-owned, democratically-controlled banking, pensions, and mortgage service.
Workers’ rights
Scrap the Tory anti-union laws so workers can defend themselves. For legal rights to organise, to strike, to take solidarity action, and to picket. Full equal rights for part-time, temporary and agency workers. 100 percent support for workers’ struggles.
Equality for all
Women’s rights: extend social provision instead of making cuts which put social burdens back on “caring” women. Trade union and political action for equal pay. Defend and extend abortion rights and provisions. For abortion on demand.
Fight homophobia and transphobia. For 100% legal equality for LGBT people.
Against fascism, racism and communalism. Unite workers – black and white; Muslim, Christian, all religions and none; migrant and British-born; “legal” and “illegal” – to fight for jobs, housing and services for all. Fight for asylum and immigration rights – no one is illegal!
Protect the environment
Achieve the necessary cuts in carbon emissions and create a million green jobs through a democratically-controlled programme of converting energy industries, transport, and housing.
For publicly-owned, expanded, integrated and free/cheap public transport. For massive public investment in renewable energy.
International solidarity
British bosses are our enemies, workers in other countries are our allies. Unite with workers across Europe and the world; fight to level up wages, conditions, services and rights.
On the evidence, sending troops to Afghanistan does more harm than good; they should be withdrawn. Cut arms spending; scrap the Trident replacement.
Fight for democracy
The expenses’ scandal shows that the democracy we have serves the bosses, not the working class. We need to fight for better, starting by putting all MPs on a worker’s wage, with properly-vetted expenses. Abolish the monarchy and the House of Lords.
Defend civil liberties and the right to protest. Measures to weaken the police as a bosses’ assault force, including local democratic accountability.