The Socialist 8 August 2012

Our health, not their wealth!

Our health not their wealth!

End the insane cycle of youth joblessness

Council tax benefit cuts

March together on 20 October and then strike together to stop all cuts

Sean Rigg inquest: damning verdict for police

Gove sneaking unqualified teachers into academies

Them & Us

Views on the Olympics and the opening ceremony

Transport 'customer experience' staff still fighting for Olympics bonus

Vote No in Unison's local government pension scheme ballot

Swansea DVLA staff protest at embarrassment of job cuts

Support Churchill cleaners, Tyne & Wear Metro

Workplace News in brief

Interview with Southampton rebel councillors

TUSC: Keeping up the pressure on the austerity parties

Socialist Students organise to fight fees and cuts

Workers win Wales Austerity Games despite bosses moving the goalposts!

Growing resistance to NHS cuts shown in Redditch

Portsmouth fans fight to save Fratton Park

Brighton pensioner jailed for non-payment of council tax

Welsh Labour: Red flag or white flag?

Obituary: Frank Mills, 1939 - 2012

Syria: Is there an alternative to the developing civil war?

Markets force savage austerity measures on Spanish workers

Trial resumes of Kazakhstan human rights activist

Previous issues, etc

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TUSC: Keeping up the pressure on the austerity parties

Clive Heemskerk, TUSC national nominating officer

The last fortnight has seen the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) contest two more council byelections, taking to five the number fought by TUSC since the nation-wide local polls in May.

In Lincoln East TUSC won a decent 6.8% share of the vote, polling one vote for every seven that went to the winning Labour candidate. This follows the third place won by TUSC in Liverpool's Riverside ward in early July, with 115 votes (6.2%), coming ahead of both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.

Critics of TUSC, however, were quick to pounce on the score in Stoke's Springfield and Trent Vale ward where, in a field of nine candidates, TUSC came in with a squeezed 1.3% vote. But the Stoke result was hardly a vindication of the idea of fighting the Con-Dems by 'staying with Labour', which lost the seat to the City Independents' group. With seven councillors already at least verbally opposing the Labour-controlled council's cuts, the Independents were seen by many as the most effective way to protest at all the establishment parties.

Sweeping general conclusions cannot be drawn from a few council byelections, either 'writing off' TUSC or exaggerating the possibilities at this stage.

Across the five seats it has contested since May, for example, it is a fact that TUSC has polled more votes than the Greens. There have been five far-right candidates in these seats, including Ukip and, in Stoke, a BNP ex-councillor, but their aggregate vote is less than TUSC's. George Galloway's Respect party, meanwhile, has not contested a single byelection since May. But can any of these parties be dismissed as a future electoral force?

The most important fact is still the absence of a vehicle for working class political representation, given the transformation of the Labour Party and its broad acceptance of the capitalists' austerity agenda. Standing in elections as widely as possible is part of the task of building a workers' alternative.