Back Corbyn for Labour Leader!

Submitted by AWL on 10 June, 2015 - 9:25 Author: Jeremy Corbyn

On Tuesday 9 June the week-long nomination period in the election for the next leader of the Labour Party opens.

After a month of pre-election election campaigning, four candidates declaring and all promising to make Labour a pale shadow of the Tory Party, Jeremy Corbyn has said he will try to get the required 35 nominations from Labour MPs.

Corbyn is the left candidate the competition needs and he deserves to get on the ballot paper. While Solidarity has political differences with Corbyn on many international issues (where he is close to the Morning Star, CPB), he has always been solid on class struggle issues.

Activists in the labour movement are campaigning now to pressure MPs to nominate Corbyn so there can be a proper debate about the direction of the Labour Party, the trade unions and the broader opposition to the Tories. We print below an extract from an article by Corbyn.


The Labour Party was founded by the trade unions and later developed into a federal structure of local constituency parties, trades and Labour councils, and socialist societies.

The link with the trade unions has always been under attack, either legislatively by successive Tory governments, or by the right wing of the Labour Party.

As we move into a period of post-election examination of the reasons for Labour’s loss — despite having had five years of austerity under the coalition government — there are those who think the way back for Labour is to move further from the centre ground, and that the election campaign was too “left wing.”

Ed Miliband tried very hard and certainly presented a very convincing argument on zero-hours contracts, rights at work, the Health and Social Care Act as well as abolishing the non-dom status on taxation.

The party’s ill-advised and unpleasant journey into the territory of immigration certainly was very harmful in the many inner-city constituencies and in areas where Ukip were pushing very hard — it actually fed into the ridiculous arguments, being advanced by Farage and others, that immigration was the cause of all problems...

There’s no question that we also lost votes to Ukip regarding the general cynism of politicians, which has been an increasing factor in public life for a long time.

In Scotland the SNP also presented an anti-austerity message even though their financial proposals for fiscal independence would appear to mean there would be even greater cuts in Scotland than there currently are.

In the new parliament the Tories have launched themselves with a flourish, attacking in the Queen’s speech trade union rights, the supply of council housing and reducing the benefit cap even further which will have a devastating effect on high rent costs in inner city areas.

The idea that anyone renting in London can afford to pay more than they already do is unthinkable.

This parliament will also be expected to vote on the replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system in 2016 thus committing £100bn of public money on our very own WMD.

London’s anti-austerity march and demonstration on June 20 is expected to be huge. Many on that march will not necessarily have voted Labour in the election, but certainly would not have wished to see the Tories in action, nor a continuation of the economic strategy of the last five years.

Much is made in the analysis of the election of “aspiration” and this is usually defined by the armchair commentators as being an individual rather than a collective phenomenon.

Maybe it’s time that we dedicated ourselves much more to ending the gross inequality in Britain, the homeless and housing crisis, and the need for a million people to use foodbanks just to survive.

We should never be ashamed or afraid to stand up for the poorest and most marginalised. That, after all is what brought socialists and trade unionists together.

Let us dispense with inappropriate words like “handouts” in this debate. Welfare is a right that is about each and everyone one of us being housed, educated, fed and kept in good health — the hallmarks of a civilised society.

This article previously appeared in the Morning Star.

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