‘Labour is indistinguishable from the Tories’

Why I joined the Socialist Party:

‘Labour is indistinguishable from the Tories’

Fred Shirley, 15 year old South West Socialist Party member

I have recently left the Labour Party and joined the Socialist Party. I joined Labour because I confused my hatred of the Tories with the hope that Labour would one day stand up for working people.

Labour grew out of the trade unions, to represent the interests of working class people. But the right of centre views that have prevailed since Tony Blair signalled the beginning of the end for ‘real Labour’, have not changed since ‘red’ Ed became leader.

Britain currently suffers the worst standard of living crisis since Queen Victoria sat on the throne.

Yet Labour refuses to reverse most of the Con-Dems cuts, instead building its entire manifesto on the freezing of energy prices, when they shouldn’t just be frozen but the energy companies nationalised.

We must break from the ‘free market’ consensus established by Thatcher, endorsed by the Labour Party, which has turned into “Blatcherism”.

Ed Miliband praised Margaret Thatcher for “creating an era of aspiration in the 1980s”.

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, “accepts” that Labour would have to use the Con-Dems’ 2015-16 cuts plans “as the basis for its own cuts programme”, including a cut in the state pension.

The Tories want to make out Ed Miliband’s a “Marxist”. But his policies aren’t Marxist, they’re blue-Labour. Miliband has supported “capitalism with a human face”. There is no such thing!

Capitalism will always feed the mouths of the few and not the many, so that’s why we need a real, democratic socialist party, not a right-wing capitalist party under the veil of Labour.


‘Con-Dems make vulnerable pay for crisis’

I’ve been a member of the Socialist Party in Sheffield for approximately five years. This is a tale of two cultures.

Part of the Con-Dem government’s solution to the global financial crisis is to create another homeless crisis. As always, the vulnerable are left to pay.

Atos are systematically hounding and investigating those who they claim are ‘milking’ the welfare state.

Every gain that working class people and socialists fought for, like public services and the welfare state, is constantly under threat by this Tory-Lib Dem government.

I have a mental health condition. Rules for the bedroom tax – which affects me – are so complicated that those with a disability are often unable to tell fact from fiction.

Since the privatisation of existing council stock, virtually no new council property has been built for over 30 years. The bedroom tax doesn’t solve this.

Tim Jones